Kerry Conway
Collecting the stem cells in our baby’s cord blood was an easy decision to go ahead with. Should our baby, Roma, develop any of these diseases in the future, we will have her perfectly matched stem cells to hopefully treat her instead of finding a matching donor.
As we have two older girls as well that are her siblings, they have a 25% chance of being matched to her too, should either of them develop one of the diseases too.
Our whole experience was so easy and we didn’t really have anything extra to think about, Future Health were extremely helpful and sorted everything for us. All we had to do was receive the box pictured above and remember to take it to the hospital with us on the big birth day!
Once we had agreed and signed our contract, we had a brief phone call running through a few questions and I got the chance to ask any questions I had too. The process was explained and I was surprised at how easy it seemed.
Future Health let our hospital know we would be collecting stem cells and they also designated us a personal phlebotomist who then phoned me to confirm she would be coming to the hospital after the birth to collect the stem cells and also take some blood samples from me. We were given her phone number and she just asked to keep her up to date as to when I go into labour & roughly when baby would be born.
At the birth, the phlebotomist took my blood, took the placenta and got everything she needed and boxed it up for us within about 30 minutes while I was enjoying my skin to skin with Roma. All we had to do then was text the courier number and ask them to come and collect it from the hospital.
The whole process was so smooth, it didn’t interfere with our birth and I barely noticed the phlebotomist. We’ve been highly impressed with the whole service. Knowing we have these stem cells stored which could potentially be life changing or saving for any of our girls is such a good feeling. Hopefully we won’t ever need to use it but if we do, we will be so glad we chose to have this done.