I participated in a campaign on behalf of Dad Central for the Cord Blood Registry. I received promotional item to thank me for my participation.
My wife and I are done having kids. When we got married we had been fairly certain that we would have two children and that would be it. After getting pregnant with our first child on our honeymoon, we were halfway done with our "plan" and were pretty much just reacting to life at the moment. As a new husband and now soon-to-be new dad, I wasn't sure what I was adjusting to more, the idea of being married or the idea of becoming a father in a few more short months. How do you really prepare for two of the biggest changes in your life?
We may have been different than most parents in that we chose to not find out the sex of our child before they entered the world. That meant no ultra-sounds and no pre-emptive testing to determine the health of our child. We thought to ourselves that if we did find out there were problems with the baby, would we terminate the pregnancy? No. Thus finding out there was something to then start worrying about prior the pregnancy would then only cause more stress on my wife and the baby.
One thing we knew a little bit about at the time but didn't research as much as I probably should have was how to take advantage of what was available to us to help with possible future health concerns was the ability to take some of the umbilical cord blood and bank it for future use for health concerns. Cord blood is being used as treatment for over 80 different diseases already and shows potential benefits for a variety of other diseases including various forms of cancer.
I can tell you that I'm sure one of the reasons I didn't pursue it for my own kids was a question of financial ability. If I remember correctly, it's been over 12 years now since we were working through our last pregnancy, the cost to obtain the cord blood wasn't the issue, it was the ongoing storage for making it available should we need it in the future. Those costs were seen more as an insurance type of cost and not a medical cost, so there was no coverage assistance for it. Luckily, due to recent legislation introduced, The Family Cord Blood Banking Act, allows healthcare savings dollars and tax savings associated with those costs.
If you and your wife are currently expecting and would like to have more information about Cord Blood Registry and banking options, you can find out more on the cordbankingbasics.com website. They're currently offering a $200 coupon off of their service that's available now through March 24, 2014.
Below is a graphic about an upcoming trial for using cord blood cells to repair issues with acquired hearing loss in children.
