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Article Series: Pregnancy
Pregnancy: Everything You Need To Know
Your
Baby's Umbilical Cord: Cord Banking
Expecting parents are faced with many important
decisions before their baby is born. These include the basics,
such as naming the baby, which pediatrician to go to, and breastfeeding
or formula feeding. Now you add in whether daycare is need
and where to go and how long to be out of work, and many parents
don’t even consider cord banking on the top priority list or
think about it until it is too late.
Cord
banking is a hot topic these days. You see the commercials
and ads in the magazines at the doctor’s office, but the connection
never quite make it. Try to think about it, it could save your
child’s life. You never know if your child will develop some
disease or need this. Having it might be the best medicine
money can buy. It doesn't hurt to take a baby's umbilical cord
blood and it will in fact be thrown away anyway. You wouldn't
think that there would be a big issue with cord blood banking.
What parent wouldn't want to do everything that they could
to make sure that their baby grows up to be healthy and prepared
for what ever happens in their life? But the problem is not
with the cord banking as much as the money involved. If you
donate you child’s cord blood, it is free, but anyone can take
your child’s blood and there might not be any if he or she
needs it. If you keep it for private use only, it is insanely
expensive and to buy the free blood of someone else is, too.
So why bother putting this on the to-do list when it just gives
you a headache?
In every umbilical cord, the
blood contains stem cells that
can become any type of cell in the human body. They have no
pre-destination and can save people from thousands of diseases,
including leukemia, sickle cell disease, and many other various
metabolic and genetic disorders. People needing this type of
stem cell therapy can either use their own, a sibling’s, or
matched unrelated person’s cord blood to save their life. For
some diseases and disorders, you would have to use the blood
of a sibling or unknown person, because the disease could be
in the blood as in leukemia. Many parents like the private
method to ensure that if need for any of their children it
is available, but this can be costly.
Also if you can’t spend the money on private use, you can
donate your child’s cord blood to the rest of the population.
If more parents donated the cord blood, private places couldn’t
charge so much to store it and it wouldn’t cost a child his
parents saving or his life to get it. So one would think this
would be a more common practice, however it isn’t. Parents
are faced with it at birth and have never really paid close
enough attention to it to know what is in the best interest
of all people.
Many new parents feel the $600 to $1000 it costs is too much
to spend. They just let it be discarded, not knowing that it
is free to donate, and if everyone donated, then these stem
cells would be more available to the public and corporations
couldn’t charge as much. Plus, if you did pay all that money
and your child or children never use it, you now will end up
donating the blood anyway and spent needless amounts of money.
If you go ahead and donate the cord blood to the public and
your child does develop a disease that can be cured this way,
you can use it if it is still available or someone else’s who
is a match. Either way you will have to pay for the blood,
better to pay if you need it and save your self thousands that
could turn around and save your child anyway.
So how it stands today is every expectant parent faces a tough
and irreversible choice: Should you bank your newborn child's
cord blood? If you are like most expectant parents, you are
perhaps overwhelmed and confused by the choice. On one hand
you receive tons of marketing from the cord blood companies
pointing out the important benefits of blood banking. On the
other hand, you've heard that there is limited medical value
to storing your child's cord blood and the costs are very high.
If everyone just donated, this life saving blood could available
to all for a lot less money. # # # # #
SolveYourProblem.com
: 2006
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