RE: Cord Blood Registries
You may want to contact your hospital to see if they are participaing in any national cord/placental blood collection efforts. My hospital is part of a larger group of hospitals that are collecting and banking placental and cord blood as part of a nationwide study. We did not plan to bank, but after I delivered they told us that they were able to collect a significant quantity of cord and placental blood and did we want to participate in the study? The way they study works is that the blood goes into a nationwide bank. If (heaven forbid) we should need the blood at some future point (and it was still available), it would be made available to us. But the blood would become part of a nationwide bank and if the blood was a match for a donor at need, then the blood would be provided to them from the bank. This was free, but required a blood sample from me and from DD and filling out a mildly lengthy screening questionnaire. We thought this was a good thing to do, so we participated.
So you may want to ask if your hospital is participating in any sort of similar effort.
HTH,
Beth, mom to older DD (8/01) and younger DD (10/06) and always missing Leah (4/22 - 5/1/05)