We have a strong family history of cancer on one side (three different kinds in three different nonsmokers), so I definitely would have done it if I'd had time to arrange it. But I'd just barely started gathering materials and looking at the different companies (as in, making a list, not even actually comparing them) when Matilda made her early entrance.

eta: I definitely would have donated if it had been an option at our hospital, but IIRC it wasn't.

Thanks, flea. I'll have to check the lists of what's being researched for what floats around the DH's family. I hate these companies that prey on my guilt and never-good-enough fears.

I saw a Buffista in that cord blood thread!

Is LJ acting up for anyone else? I can hit my home page, but not my friends page or anyone else's journal pages.

Sparky, I banked blood for my surgery because I am not able to be a blood donor (lived in the UK too long), and I didn't want to take blood from the supply and not be able to replenish it. Just a thing of mine, I guess. I want to give blood, but they won't let me because of MAD COW. Do I look crazy?

Wait, don't answer that. It's not the MAD COW!

banked blood for my surgery

This is saving the baby's cord blood and banking it in a private bank (to the tune of about $4K), so think more stem-cells not transfusion-type blood.

I generally can't donate to a blood bank because I don't weigh enough, which is too bad because I have no problems with needles and my veins pop up nicely for collection.

Do I look crazy?

Only to some probably very narrow-minded people, but we don't like them anyway.

This is saving the baby's cord blood and banking it in a private bank (to the tune of about $4K), so think more stem-cells not transfusion-type blood.

oh, I see. Um, what do you do with it? Is it for the baby if there's a problem ([insert diety of choice] forbid?) Is it for research?

Is it for the baby if there's a problem

Yes. Or a sibling. But whether or not they're collecting correctly, storing correctly, etc., is questionable. It's very speculative, but guilt and fear are powerful motivators.

If we don't do cord blood, we can donate the placenta to NIH for research (which I'm cool with, but from the look on some other people's faces last night at child birth class, some people certainly aren't).

Sigh.

My heart keeps aching anytime I see more "news" on Natasha Richardson and then it makes the funeral scene from "Love, Actually" (Liam Neeson's character eulogozing his wife) float through my brain and then my heart starts aching again.

I am strange and unusual.

The most inventive use of bacon I encountered at Baconfest (the year AFTER I missed the chocolate covered bacon) was maple ice cream, with crumbled bacon and quarter-size pancackes mixed into it. Teh YUM! I was positive the woman who made it could have sold that to Ben & Jerry's (especially appropriate because Baconfest is in Vermont).