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My hubby works for a blood bank and he talked to some people there who said that it wasn't worth it to bank it. I still would have liked to if we could afford it, but we can't, so we didn't really have a choice either way.

I didn't even know about donating. I'll look into that with my next!

@blushink: Thanks! I wonder if mine doesn't b/c I feel like I would have heard about it. Either way, I'll def be looking into it for next time!

We donated

We donated. Having Fred Hutch in Seattle we knew it was going to a good cause.

Donate. I work in Life Sciences and I'm pretty passionate about donating vs banking.

I chose to bank.

@blushink: We didn't need to fill out paperwork that early. My doc asked me the day of my c-section if I wanted to donate and I signed a form then. It probably varies hospital to hospital.

We didn't bank. I'm actually not sure what happened to it?

We were planning to do a public donation, but hopefully they don't hold us to the time limit and I am 34 weeks right now. I was planning to talk with my doctor at my next appointment to look at the options. I had absolutely no idea that there were timing restrictions. Hopefully they still let us donate, otherwise I guess we will do delayed clamping.

I imagine that I'll donate mine. I've heard that the banking can be expensive and still potentially unuseful.

We donated. My father died of leukemia when I was 3 and his brother died of childhood leukemia, so I did a lot of research about banking, and ultimately decided to donate for the same reasons cited by @mamadopt.

@Banana My pleasure! When cancer strikes chemo is often used for treatment. With chemo good cells are killed along with bad. Getting a stem cell transplant can regrow those good cells. It has been shown that when your own stem cells are used survival rates double. You also have a smaller chance of your body rejecting cells that come from your own cord blood. They are also used to grow new blood cells around damaged tissues and blocked arteries of the heart from heart attacks and coronary disease. We've been seeing a lot of labs successfully grow nerve cells from stem cells which would vastly improve the lives of people with neurological disease. They have even used them after traumatic brain injuries to grow new cells in the brain and improve functionality. It really is quite amazing. Also, if someone in your family that doesn't have banked blood finds themselves in the position to need them the success rates of treatment improve greatly when those stem cells are donated by the patients family. If you were to need them for example, you could use the banked cord blood of your son and statistically fare much better than other donor cells.

@Banana it really is my pleasure! I'm so happy that my information helped. It really is a very amazing thing. My old college friend just had a baby and even though she and her husband are struggling financially they canceled cable to pay for the banked cord blood. She is a doctor too if that makes you feel any better about your decision! I hope you will never need it but I'm glad you will have it