Donating Cord Blood

Mabmin

Has anyone donated their cord blood?  I was just reading about this on Northwestern's website and didn't realize that you needed to make arrangements in advance if you want to donate it.  The website that I read said that you have to bring a kit with you to the hospital and I assume that the hospital must make arrangements to ship it for you, but I don't know how it works.  I plan to call and get information about it, but was wondering if anyone had personal experience with it. 

DTNZ4Ever

We donated DS cord blood. The company send out a packet of information that we needed to fill out prior then they sent the kit to us. We then brought the kit to the hospital with us. I just let the nurse know and left it out where the could see it. The hospital handled everything once DS was born and it was picked up or sent out by the hosptial. We got a certificate for DS in the mail which was cute saying that on my first day of life I helped to save another life. It takes a little time and effort but if it means we can help someone eles why not.

cranberry27

You can get the kit for Prentice here:

https://www.givcord.org/ 

I am very happy I donated my cord blood for a few reasons:

1.  Many samples (I believe more than half, but I don't have the stats on hand) are unusable because of volume or quality.  You could pay thousands to bank unusable blood.

2.  You can rarely use your own cord blood.  You need somebody else's

3.  The chance of being able to use it for family is slim.  My father has battled cancer for many years.  We asked his doctors if there was any chance that cord blood would help him, even in the future with possible medical advances. They said absolutely not. 

 One thing my husband was pissed about - we did pay about $100 for the cord blood extraction procedure.  It wasn't covered by insurance, so the donation wasn't technically free.  Our doctor was so happy we were donating.

SallyCampos22

We're donating through Lifesource, they're a blood bank in Chicago and the burbs. I went to their website (lifesource.org) and filled out an online form, they sent me the packet within 2 weeks or so.

As far as I know the entire process is covered by the company collecting the cord blood, so we won't have to pay anything out-of-pocket.