For the last few weeks Erin has been certain that our upcoming baby is a girl!
I guess we should've listened to her because she was right.
Erin is going to be a big sister.
Our Baby Girl is due in September.
We are getting in touch with Viacord about saving this baby's cord blood.
Why?
First, our two other kids were not bone marrow matches for Erin, so she doesn't have a perfect sibling bone marrow match (yet). If this baby is a match and Erin relapses then we'll have a perfect match for Erin. Viacord has a sibling connection program that will save our baby's cord blood in case Erin needs it. Isn't that awesome?
Did you know that you can donate your newborn's cord blood to a cord blood bank?
It's really easy and as far as I've researched it's FREE to donate the cord blood. It doesn't hurt the baby or the mom. Our friend Millie has relapsed ALLeukemia and is undergoing chemo and soon some awful radiation in preparation for a cord blood transplant, it's similar to a bone marrow transplant, just using cord blood instead of bone marrow. Our friend Brielle, who had relapsed AMLeukemia recently successfully finished her cord blood transplant.
Generous people donate their newborns' cord blood to a bank like Viacord and then it becomes available to save lives! It has saved Brielle's life and could save Millie's too!
So, if you're expecting and you aren't planning on saving your baby's cord blood please consider researching more about donating it and saving a life! Cord blood can be used to treat up to 80 different diseases.
Congrats on the baby girl coming! As far as the cord blood banking, I think it is a wonderful option for families in your situation to save the cord blood in a private bank. For information of other readers, just a clarification. It is free to donate a baby's cord blood to a public cord blood bank, but most likely the family of that baby will not be able to use that particular cord blood if needed down the line, as it is put into a public database and available to the public when needed. Private cord blood banking (as in Viacord) is definitely not free, but your cord blood is available for your family to use in a later instance should it be needed. Public cord banking is a great option for expectant mothers who find it not financially possible to store their cord blood with a private bank. The private cord banking (in my opinion) is a better option, if they can afford it, for families such as yours with the history of leukemia or any other blood cancers/genetic diseases. I worked with a family that spent a lot of money to bank the cord blood from their infant, subsequently had another child diagnosed with leukemia, and that child ended up having a cord blood transplant from a public bank rather than the cord blood they had saved simply because it was found to be a better match for that child. Sorry about the lengthy comment, but I think there are a lot of people out there who are not informed of the differences in cord blood banks. Again, congrats on this baby girl. You have such adorable babies...I'm sure this one will be no different!
ReplyDeleteHooray for your little girl! That is sooooo exciting! I'm so happy for you guys!
ReplyDeleteCord blood banking is such an interesting thing. I read about it for a while in a magazine while we were waiting in clinic. I am definitely interested in it. But did you know we aren't eligible to donate our baby's cord blood to the public bank because we've had a child with leukemia? That's what I read. (We can still privately bank our own blood for our family's use.) It makes me super sad because donating to the national cord blood bank is a PHENOMENAL way to save lives. But I'll definitely be looking into the private options when the time comes.