Donating umbilical cords?

beth2626

With our daughter, we donated her cord. But yesterday I called Viacord (or SavCord or something like that) and they said they won't take twins' cords. Do you know the reason for this? Were you able to donate your cords? If so, to whom? I feel like it's such a waste of good cord blood, and I'm bummed out I can't help.

robinsokj

Thats strange.  Via cord has been bugging the sh*t out of me even after I told them a. I was having twins, and b. I wasn't interested.  I just wanted to win free diapers. 

I've heard that with twins, you may not be able to get enough out of the cords to be worth saving

Temp159135562506975

companies will certainly take your money to bank your twin's cord blood- but they don't take donations b/c they usually can't get enough of it for it to be worth it. 

we also donated our first son's - but couldn't donate the twins b/c they are twins.

macchiatto

When I was looking into donating bone marrow or cord blood, I did read that you cannot donate cord blood if you're having twins, b/c of the risk of the blood from two different babies getting intermixed.

wildsuey

We were told that as well...there was too much of a risk of the cord blood being intermixed that they wouldn't have a 100% guarantee of which twin the blood belonged to so they wouldn't accept the donated blood but of course if we paid for private banking they would take it.

MediMom

I've never heard of this, and I would be worried if my doctor couldn't tell which twin the blood came from.  I'd be worried about any doctor or facility who couldn't label babies and cords appropriately.  It's possible that ViaCord wouldn't take it because you don't get as much volume from each twin as you would get from one single birth.  But, there have been transplants using multiple units of cord blood stem cells (like, from 2 twins) that have been successful, so it wouldn't make sense not to try to save them.  Most private banks don't require a certain amount of blood to save them, so that might be your answer.