A few hours ago we started a very debated topic among mothers and fathers, especially among those with all the information. I say this because most mothers who do not plan to keep cord blood in a private center, when they know about the possibility of donating the blood of their future baby's umbilical cord, access it, because they can help cure other diseases of others. Children and other people.
The reason they explain (I have heard this on several occasions to pregnant women) is that "to be thrown in the trash, because they take advantage of it to cure other people", and reason is not lacking, because if the options were Trash or donation, I think everyone would choose the latter. However, as we have already mentioned in the other entry, the options are not two, but four.
We do not count the garbage (there are three left), so we have the freeze in a private bank, the donation to a public bank (of these we have already spoken in the other entry) and finally the possibility of try to get the cord blood to reach the baby, your real recipient.
And leave that blood for the baby?
We have talked about this in Babies and more and that is why I will not extend too much, but it seems that nature has foreseen that this blood reaches the baby and it is we men who, for whatever reason, decide a good day to stop that process once a child is born (almost in a way immediately and in the movies running, as if the baby's life was in it).
If the baby is born once the cord is allowed to continue beating there is an exchange of approximately 80 ml of blood from the placenta to the baby. That said it seems little (80 ml of anything!), However we must take into account that a newborn baby of about 4 kg weighs between 280 and 400 ml of blood, which is not so much. In other words, it is estimated that the amount of blood that can pass from the placenta to the baby once it is born can reach 30% of its blood volume.
This causes the baby to have many more red blood cells that will be quickly destroyed by hemolysis, providing the baby's body with about 50 mg of iron that it can store, decreasing the risk of iron deficiency anemia, quite common in babies (because most are soon the cord has been cut, surely) and that can affect neurological development, among other things.
The possible side effects of allowing that passage of blood to the baby have always been described as hypervolemia, polycythemia, hyperviscosity and hyperbilirubinemia. Several studies carried out a posteriori, to try to determine the best performance, show that children who have an early impingement have worse hemoglobin levels and a lower hematocrit, there are no differences at respiratory level, bilirubin levels they are superior in children with late impingement, but without being significant and there are no differences with respect to neonatal morbidity.
For this reason, today, It is considered that the best practice is the most natural, that is, letting the cord stop beating, justification being necessary in case it is decided to perform an early clamp.
Whatever you do don't tell anyone
Being the end of the entry this is the point where I should say that, weighing all the options I would do this and not the other (it is what we usually do in all the entries). On this occasion I will refrain from commenting.
The decision to make when choosing what to do with your future baby's cord blood is complicated and very personal. So much so that it would almost raise this issue to the level of "personal and non-transferable", where there is religion, abortion and the political party to which one votes.
So, decide what you decide, almost I would suggest that you do not comment with other mothers and fathers:
If you donate it to a public bank you will be very altruistic and you will think a lot about others, but little about your son, who runs out of a good dose of iron reserves.
If you keep it in a private bank you are spending money to save cells that probably never serve your children or you, when you could have donated it to the community or not done so that your child would receive an extra volume of blood at birth. In addition, so you cover all the possibilities, because if you end up serving the sample that you have saved, great, but if you finally need foreign cells, you will be receiving them from another donor who preferred to offer them for the common good, when you did not do it.
Finally, if you decide not to donate the blood and try to make a late grip you will be doing good to your child, but you will be depriving science and society of cells that can help save lives, when you don't know for sure if The professional who will attend you will clamp the cord as soon as the baby leaves and when most children, despite not receiving that extra volume of blood, have a magnificent health.
