Random but timely - Cord Blood donation

In discussing todays (hopefully) events of pending labor, I mentioned to a friend that we need to remember our cord blood kit, which then led to a discussion on what exactly that meant. I guess I never did mention it on this blog whereas I thought i had and everyone knew. i was wrong. Bryan and I found a place to donate our baby's cord blood for free. It is not controversial as all they do is take the blood from the discarded embilical cord and place it into vials. If they don't store it for medical use, it just gets discarded with the placenta after birth. You can read more about it on the website below. Most of the information out there talks about storing the baby's cord blood for your own private use which is very expensive. It starts at like $2,000 just to store, then there is an annual fee for every year it is in storage. However, we found out that Lifesource has a free donation program. If you are not interested in storing the cord blood for yourself, you can donate it for free. You just request a kit via their website, fill out some paperwork, then take the kit with you to the hospital when you have the baby. If your medical history matches someone, they give it to the needy family. If you don't qualify for medical donation, they use it for science.

Cord blood has been used to help young children and adults alike recover from diseases such as lukemia, cancer etc. It is sort of the equilvalent of donating bone marrow. There are two links below one from lifesource to find out how to donate and the other is to learn more about it. Pass the word along.

http://www.lifesource.org/specialprogCord.asp

http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Donate_Cord_Blood_Share_Life/index.html