To Bank or Not To Bank
Hubz and I have made an important decision to bank our baby's cord blood through Viacord right after he's born. I have done some research on this topic and though stem cell technology is yet at its infancy, the advent of medical research may speed up its growth in the future. Our main concern at first was the cost, especially for the first year. But we figured this will serve as an insurance (which we hope we'll never use).
Why did we finally decide to bank his cord blood? There have been quite a few transplants using a baby's cord blood at present. Though the diseases being treated are those that are few and far between, who knows what the future might bring. Both our families have histories of cancer. Hubz' dad died of liver cancer, and my grandpa succumbed to prostate cancer. My dad has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer (but thank God it was detected early on). Stroke and heart diseases, not to mention diabetes is also rampant in our families, so does high cholasterol. True, we can avoid these diseases by a lifestyle change. However, some diseases are just genetic by nature. Take me, for instance. Who would've thought I used to have high cholasterol when I was even considered underweight pre-pregnancy?! Blame it on bad genes! My dad has uncontrollable cholasterol level even when he barely eats at all!
I asked my roommate when I was weighing this option and she gave a valid point. Our lives are not within our hands - it is with God's. Miracles do happen everyday (and our baby is a testimony to that). But maybe God is also giving us an option when he opened the doors for stem cell research.
Basically, the decision lies in every family. But as a parent, what wouldn't you give for your child, right?
hi mickee, i wanted to do that with ninna before but they didn't have that kind of technology in the phils then. youre lucky to have it available to you now. with all the different kinds of diseases cropping up nowadays, we really need to do everything we can to protect our children (and ourselves, as well). good luck :)
ReplyDeleteMickee - good for you!! We thought of doing this as well, and now the reasons WHY we didn't is somewhat vague to me now (although I'm sure the cost is one of them) but under different circumstances, perhaps we would've pursued it even more. I like what your roommate said, but also at the same time, if you can do something to stop anything that can potentially affect your baby, wouldn't you go for it? That's why, even if we didn't do the cord banking, we voted YES on stem cell research.
ReplyDeletehey mickee. consider it a blessing that you now have this option available for you. i'm sure others would have wanted to do the same but are not able to due to its unavailability here. as they say, prevention is better than a pound of cure. but we sure do pray that your child won't need to use it. anything for the baby really. here's praying for your safe delivery. =D
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