1017th Friday Blog Roundup
1 day ago
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Cord Blood
I'm just now starting to research the benefits of banking cord blood in a private bank and I'm curious if any of you have thoughts on this. Do the potential benefits outweigh the price? The brochure we were given was for vi.acord. Their pricing is about $2,200 for the first year and then $125 per year for each year after. Their website says they have pricing for twins, but you have to call for details. I wouldn't expect there to be a a huge discount. Thoughts?
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7 comments:
Damn! My only though is - why the heck does it cost so much? Geeze!
that is expensive!
Wasn't worth the major expense to us. We don't have any major diseases in our bloodlines that would put Julian at risk - and all our prenatal screenings/tests looked good. I know that doens't eliminate every possible issue, but it helped us make our decision.
Instead, we decided to donate Julian cord blood to a donor bank. That way children who are a match can use it if they need it!
Hopefully, there's never a need for the blood, but storing it is a form of health insurance and we didn't want to regret our decision down the road.
We compared ViaCord and CBR and ended up selecting CBR. I called them with a list of questions and I liked their answers. CBR was our OB's recommendation as well.
We initially thought cord blood banking was out of our price range, but we set up a gift registry at CBR and let our family and friends help defray the expense by contributing. Also used the $250 coupon from
http://cord-blood-banking-coupon.com
The cost breakdown was:
$1625 one-time collection & processing fee
(after using $250 coupon mentioned above)
$150 courier fee
$125 first year storage fee
Best wishes!
I used to work in bone marrow transplant and I would say no. What they don't tell you is that there are often not enough stem cells in one cord, so most cord blood transplants involve four or five different cords, all with different HLA types. It depends on what type of cancer or hematologic disorder a person has because some absolutely cannot be cured with a cord blood transplant (maybe in the future, but not now). You're often better off with a full transplant from a closely matched person (allogeneic) or from yourself after chemo (autologous).
We thought long and hard about this...after all, when it takes this much to get pregnant, you don't want to risk anything. After much research, we decided not to do it. It was a cost thing, but above that, we found out that the cord blood was really only good for the first year and after that, it may not have any benefits. Since we don't have any major issues in our families, we decided against it. We looked into public cord banking, but we were too late for the deadline (yes, there is a deadline). Good luck with your decision.
Hi, we just started looking into it (22 weeks with a singleton) and we are leaning more toward a public bank. I think for us it is a cost thing.
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