Cord blood question for those adopting babies

We aren't adopting, but we will face similar challenges to those of you adopting a newborn, especially if it is a closed adoption.

We had a pre-birth meeting with the pediatrician I want to use, and we asked about cord blood collection. Actually, I was trying to find out which group he would recommend, but he told us that the chances of a child needing its own cord blood was very small, and he recommended we donate it or something similar. But I reminded him that we don't know who donated the egg for our baby, so does that change things? He will be getting back to us on that.

So those of you who have the option of storing cord blood, what are you doing? And do you have a recommendation for which service to use?

My DH is a radiation oncologist and he thinks its a waste of money. He's been to cancer lectures where they said the amount of blood is so small and the possibility of it helping is super small as well. I think nowadays people recommend delayed clamping (letting the cord finish pulsing) before cutting instead.

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Originally Posted by georgiegirl

My DH is a radiation oncologist and he thinks its a waste of money. He's been to cancer lectures where they said the amount of blood is so small and the possibility of it helping is super small as well. I think nowadays people recommend delayed clamping (letting the cord finish pulsing) before cutting instead.

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Yes, it will be very beneficial for your baby to get to keep its cord blood. That is 1/3 of its blood supply, and there have been numerous threads on here about all the reasons to delay cord clamping.

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When I had DD I looked into donating cord blood but it seemed the banks really weren't interested in Caucasian cord blood (more demand for mixed race or some other racial groups). I'm not sure if a cord blood bank will want to know more than just the ethnicity of the egg donor (which I imagine you know?) as we didn't get that far. When I had DS I asked that they delay clamping and he got his cord blood. I was much happier with that decision (and DH told me cutting the cord was way less gross). I never even considered paying to store cord blood--I feel like this is a huge investment for very little chance of return and that the only way companies that do this survive is through threat of "what if" guilt.

We also delayed clamping with both of our boys after lots of research.