Banking on it

When we got pregnant I knew right away that I wanted to bank the babies cord blood. There is so much research on diseases that it can help with or even cure. On the info about banking cord blood biphenotypic leukemia is there-you don't see it many places.
The next question was how would we come up with the money to pay for it? I got some information from a cord blood company and I mentioned we wanted to store it because we have another child with leukemia. She told me that they had a program that we could bank the cord blood for FREE!

After talking with the transplant coordinator at the hospital we decided to go with ViaCord and their sibling Connection Plan. They would collect, ship, test and bank the cord blood for 5 years at NO COST to us. At the end of the 5 years we can decide to continue to store it and pay the yearly fee, donate it or have them destroy it. The answer was a no brainer-if we aren't able to pay to keep it banked, then we will donate it.
I asked if someone else (besides Simeon) in our family could benefit from it could we use it for them, and they said we could, but that it is specifically saved for Simeon.
Simeon's leukemia will be considered "cured" after he's been off treatment for 5 years, which will be around the time that the program ends.

After Rebecca was born Dr. Clevenger went right to collecting every drop of cord blood. We now have a beautiful bag of possible life saving cells in case it should be needed.

There are many things I've considered "liquid gold" in my life but this bag tops them all. This "liquid gold" can save a life. It's a precious gift that Rebecca gave just by being the Heavenly child she is.


After the cord blood was collected, they drew blood from me to be sent it. Johann called the company and they made sure everything was labeled correctly. Our nurse was so kind staying and helping to make sure everything was correct. They saw in my file that we had a child with leukemia and she knew how extra important this was to us. After everything was checked Johann sealed the box and a courier came and picked it up. It was then flown to Kentucky to be tested then stored.


The results of the cord blood came back as: volume collected 84ml
Nucleated cell count (in millions) 528

To have a successful transplant the cord blood needs to contain 100 million nucleated cells-we far exceeded that. We pray that we will never have a need to use these cells, but if we ever do they are waiting.