Who is banking cord blood?
My OB is pushing for it because DH and I are an interracial couple - the baby could have a hard time getting a new kidney, liver, etc should he need it. The cost is high - not untenable, but high given that we're not 100% sold on public school and are jockeying for an out of state move that won't be cheap - so we want to do it only if it's terrible not to.
We both come from large, healthy families, save a propensity for PCOS and adult-onset diabetes. Neither of which can be cured by cord blood.
I'll also admit, having lived for a long time somewhere that it's frowned upon, I'm rolling my eyes whenever I hear someone talk about bad things that happen due to interracial marriage.
But if we don't and something bad happens, I'll never forgive myself.
What are the rest of you doing?
Re: Who is banking cord blood?
I am definitely going to do it, but I just dont know with what company. I asked a few days ago what other people were doing and did not get a response so I am not sure if it was a delicate question or if people are just not doing it.
I am definitely going to do it as a safety measure. I would rather have them and not use/need them than need them and wished I had them.
DH and I wanted to but it's absolutely impossible for us to afford. Times have been tough financially the last couple of months and will only get more difficult with LO coming in a few months. We have gone over several different budgets and just can't fit it in.
If we had the money, I'd do it in a heartbeat. If it coule potentially save my son's life, why not?
What was the gist of the CNN article?
I googled cord blood banking and was disgusted - I saw a ton of stuff out there about how private banking is sooooo unfair because only some people can afford it (not all parents can afford to feed their children 3 meals a day, does that mean nobody should?!) and moral duty to donate for the public good (F the public good, my child's more important!).
We're coming down to the wire here. I really wish there was an "interracial families" board here- issues like these, it would be a good resource.
Uhhh, do you have anymore information about this because I have NEVER heard anything like this relating to being an interracial child. DH and I are an interracial couple (black/white) and we even had amnio counseling. Never has a single doctor ever said anything like this due to LO being interracial. I even tried to google this and ... nothing. I'd really like to see some information on this.
With that said, I think cord banking is a great idea for anyone who may have a history of medical problems in their family. If you can afford the initial fee as well as the recurring fees, then why not do it. On the other hand, Cord banking doesn't cure everything and with it being so new it is hard to know which company to trust.
I couldn't find anything on Google either... DH and I don't live in the most liberal community (I know, I know... DH put in for a transfer the minute we realized AF was late) so we wondered if maybe the OB's info wasn't more political than medical. Our doc is perfectly nice and clearly has no problem with us, but there are restaurants in town that don't seat black people and stupidness like that. I'm a transplant who had a HUGE culture shock, so sometimes when people from here talk about certain things... it raises my BS meter. Hence asking random internet people.
OB's explanation was that because of the "different" genetic mix that multiracial people have, that it is often harder to find stem cells and organ donors who are compatible since there are fewer multiracial people than monoracial. We don't know enough hard science to judge whether that's true or not.
Here it is:
https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/18/umbilical.cord.public.banks/index.html
FYI - consider a public cord bank. They keep it for free and if you or your family member needs it before someone else who is a match you get it back. Check into it. I heard a few people talking about it a few months back.
Figures...sorry you have a doctor with this kind of mentality. Nice or not.
This is what we will be doing.
I wouldn't be so hard on the doctor. I mean, we already know for a fact that the public banks have a much lower success rates at finding genetic matches for non-whites who need donations, simply because the banks have a much smaller supply of cord blood from non-white donors. It seems perfectly plausible to me that it would be even harder to find genetic matches for mixed race children.
I'm not trying to be hard on the doctor... as I said, he doesn't seem like a bad guy. (And JMO, you can't be a good person and be a racist). What I said was that because of the levels of racism/bigotry I see around this community, whenever someone who was raised here says something negative about interracial marriage and/or people from another ethnic group (even if it's something I know to be true, such as "most people with sickle cell anemia are black"), I tend to discredit it because of the source.
Now if the above is true, that mostly white people are donating to public banks, thus making it harder for non-white people to find matches from the same, then, YES, this is the kind of information we need to know. So thank you for that.
Perhaps the OB meant to say that, but didn't communicate it well.
I wish I knew where I had read that, but I believe I've actually read it more than one place (I've done a fair amount of reading on cord blood banking/donation, because it was a hard decision for us).
OK... here's one place:
"Complicating matters further, each public bank has its own registry, so transplant centers must search many different databases to find a match for a patient. Currently, a Caucasian patient has an 88 percent chance of finding a cord-blood match through a public-bank registry, and minorities have a 58 percent chance. (Collection hospitals tend to be in areas with higher rates of Caucasian births, and parents from certain ethnic groups are wary of donating for religious or cultural reasons.)"
https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/my-baby/cord-blood-banking/the-cord-blood-controversy/