umbilical cord blood

As parents part of the lifestyle is to help teach your kids how to think, how to be prepared in case something goes wrong. They say knowledge is power and that is a life lesson that should be imparted onto children, but it should also be embraced by the parents too. Often times when thinking about how to protect children we think of life threatening situations from the outside without considering the dangers that come from inside the body.

No parent ever wants to think their child may become sick from a disease as dangerous as leukemia, lymphoma, heart disease, or MS but medical experts are encouraging parents to do their research before the baby’s birth. By research doctors often mean becoming informed about the power of stem cells.

At the moment of your baby’s birth there exists a unique type of blood within the umbilical cord called cord blood. Cord blood contains within it a powerful series of stem cells that have the ability to develop into disease fighting immune cells over time. Doctors encourage parents to be to do some research before the birth to learn the benefits of preserving cord blood, news about cord blood treating new illnesses, and stories from other families who have needed a cord blood transplant.

Cord blood has a distinct advantage that doctors encourage more parents to learn about; it cuts out having to look for a suitable donor as a bone marrow transplant would. Because of genetics, your baby will be perfectly suited to receive his or her own cord blood at any point throughout their lives should the need occur. Other family members are likely to also benefit from cord blood preservation because of their blood relation to your baby.

The world can sometimes be a frightening place and it’s best to keep children prepared to stay alert in troubling times. But that advice should apply to parents all the same. There are things we can do to protect children from the outside, and by making a choice we can choose to protect children from what lies inside. Knowledge is power as it makes us informed, informed enough to understand the power of a choice.

Thanks to advances in medical science – particularly over the last 20 years or so – there are now many lifesaving and symptom controlling treatments available for a whole range of diseases and serious medical conditions that were previously virtually untreatable. Great progress has also been made in the prevention of stroke and heart attacks and the treatment of cancer. Researchers are working all the time to improve these existing methods and are striving to identify new ones.

Blood transfusions are an essential tool used in lifesaving situations, as are organ donations and procedures involving bone marrow transplant. The part that stem cells can play in the treatment of such patients has been found to be invaluable. In view of that fact there is now a way to save lives that is accessible to every mother, via a safe and painless five-minute routine at the time of her baby’s birth? The good news is that the technique of collecting, processing and storing umbilical cord blood now makes it possible for almost every expectant mother to be a lifesaver.

The importance of donating umbilical cord blood

Umbilical cord blood contains un-specialized cells – medical researchers have discovered that, when stimulated, these have the potential to become specialized stem cells with the attributes needed to form healthy body tissue, muscle or new blood cells. Instead of discarding the umbilical cord after birth along with the placenta, scientists established that if they collected the blood, processed, froze and stored it in an umbilical stem cell bank, it could be used later in the treatment of a growing number of serious conditions. Amongst others, these include, leukemia and other cancers. In the future it is hoped that other illnesses can also be treated in this way, including stroke, HIV and AIDS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes, to name a few.

A simple way to save a life

Although the process of draining the umbilical cord takes only a few minutes following the birth of the baby, there are a few things for the mother to do earlier in her pregnancy. She needs to check if her hospital works with a specific cord blood bank and to give her permission for the donation, complete a questionnaire about her health and allow a small blood sample to be checked in case of any infection. If all is well, then mom-to-be is set up to save a life when her new baby is born by donating the umbilical cord blood. There should be no concerns about the process to be undergone, and in case of any complication the health and safety of mother and baby is prioritized in all cases.

Donating umbilical cord blood to a public bank

There are two types of cord blood bank – private and public. Private banks store the donation specifically for the donor’s family. Whilst this offers a degree of reassurance in the event of a serious illness developing, there is very little likelihood of this, plus there are substantial fees for the family to pay the bank initially at the time of the donation, and then annually for continuing storage. An umbilical stem cell bank that is public, on the other hand, makes no charge for handling the donation and the cord blood can be made available to those in need of it, as long as it is a good match for the proposed recipient.

The beauty of using a public cord blood bank is that children with life-threatening illnesses, such as lymphoma and Sickle Cell Anemia can access stem cell donations that would otherwise not be available to them.