Cord Blood Banking...?

So, as if having a baby isn't worth a million decisions, the world is throwing out another one: to cord bank or to not cord bank.  Unfortunately, it's a once in a birth chance to save your baby's cord blood (aka stem cells, I think...), and you don't get a second chance (until you have the next one, lol).  So for people like us, this is really a once in a lifetime thing...(yes, we're having just one! =P)

What exactly is cord blood banking?  You basically choose a company, they send you some stuff to take to the hospital with you, someone (I'm going to guess a doctor?) will collect your baby's umbilical cord (along with the blood/stem cells inside) and put it in whatever the company sent you, and you call the company and they have a private courier pick it up and deliver to their "bank" to store for you for how ever long you paid for it to be stored.  Then, someday, you might want to use this blood to cure your child, yourself, your spouse, your parents, your other children.....of some type of disease/cancer.  Any company that provides this service will be able to tell you what diseases/cancers these cells can help with (over 70 diseases/cancers are on the list!).

Now, we're super interested (okay, maybe it's just me...), primarily because cancer runs in my family.  You never know whether these cells could save someone's life.  BUT...it's not cheap!  You can easily spend thousands of dollars, and you need to pick the right company.  GAAAAHHHHH!!!!

My pricing research so far (in order of preference at the moment) *Includes storage for 18-21 years:
ViaCord:  $4,225 (Plus a $450 discount if booked by Nov 15, 2010)
FamilyCord:  $3725 (Plus a $300 discount right now)
Cord  Blood Registry (CBR):  $3,920 (Plus a $250 discount coupon)
CryoCell:  $3,495
AlphaCord:  $3,545
LifeBank USA:  $3,995
NeoCells: $3,110

The reason my top 3 are my top three is because they're the biggest in the industry.  The main fear is that if a bank goes bankrupt, what happens to your cells?  You'd figure with these bigger companies, you don't have to worry AS much about them going bankrupt.

*Sigh* I'm not quite sure what the other differences are between the companies.  I mean, they all pretty much do the same thing...but I worry about quality of service, especially the storage.  Does paying more really mean better service?  I totally procrastinated looking into this.  What happened was I was interested....I found out how much it cost, figured I couldn't afford it, and then kinda forgot about it for months.  But, I received one of those brochures in the mail, and it re-sparked my interest.  I brought it up to my mom, telling her about the benefits...considering how much cancer runs in the family and all, and she asked me to do more research on companies and pricing.  So here we are. =)  I basically have....5 days to make a decision.  Terrible, isn't it?

Well, when I (I would've said we, but who am I kidding...you know I'll be the one) make the decision, I'll make sure to keep y'all updated.

Till next time!