Its Liquid Gold

It's the newest birthing health craze- and I'm a huge proponent!

While pregnant, we received information in the mail regarding cord blood banking on a daily basis. We looked over the information and weighed the pros (all of the life saving options) against the cons (#1 con= it's E-X-P-E-N-S-I-V-E!).

Here's our list:

The pros (straight off of viacord.com):

- Treatable diseases include 12 cancers, 16 bone marrow diseases, 8 blood disorders (including sickle cell anemia), 18 metabolic diseases, and 17 autoimmune diseases

- They are SUPER close to finding the cure for diabetes, cerebral palsy and brain injury using cord blood.

- There have already been over 200 successful cures of diseases in children using their cord blood

- There is absolutely 0 risk to you or your baby during collection. It's totally non-invasive.

The cons:

- Having to make certain that the doctor collects the blood correctly. Its a pass or fail procedure. If they do it wrong, there's no going back and you've already paid to have it collected...

- It's super expensive and there's no "end date." The initial collection fee was around $2500 (which you can pay off monthly for 6, 12 or 18 months) and there is a annual $125 fee that pays for storage for the next year. That means $125/year for the rest of your child's life...and I'm hoping my kid lives to be 100- so that's $12,500.00.

With Josh being a diabetic (although there is no current guarantee that it's a familial trait), and cancer running throughout both sides of our families, I couldn't take the risk of NOT saving my baby's cord blood. Honestly, I think that I would pay almost anything to have the ability to save my child's life. We chose the 12 month payment plan so we've already paid off the cord blood and now we're just paying $125 annually. It's great. And, to know that I could possibly save my child from having an insulin pump attached to his side for the rest of his life- yea, that's a pretty good deal.

Oh, and you can put it on your Baby Registry! I didn't know that when we decided to buy the service- but, I do for the next kid!

If you're pregnant or know someone that is, please look into this service. You child's life is always worth saving- there is no dollar figure that you can attach to it...

The link: http://www.viacord.com/
The phone number: 866-668-4895

Fresh Out!

Thankful for the availability to save a life,

Erica