My Husband and I have traveled to China with our son twice now for stem cell transfusions.  We never saved Drew's umbilical cord and we knew for three days that he would be born extremely early.  I don't even remember having any discussions about this with our team of doctors.  I remember thinking briefly about it but I remember reasoning with Mike that the medical team would tell us if they thought we should save it.  We were definitely not in the right frame of mind to be making these type of decisions.  Looking back on the Spring of 2006 I sure wish we would have screamed "Yes, save it!".  We didn't know anything concerning umbilical cord stem cells and the conditions the stem cells can treat.  However we haven't beaten ourselves up over it, we learned a long time ago that worrying and obsessing over your past only makes your present life miserable.  Anyways, my advice for anyone expecting would be to definitely save the umbilical cord because you can never predict the future.  The potential benefits from doing so outweigh any costs associated with it.

I do know that Duke University located in Durham, North Carolina will transfuse a person's own umbilical cord stem for treating cerebral palsy.  I called in the spring of 2008 and Drew was put on a transplantation list since we didn't save his umbilical cord.  The person I talked with did tell me due to his extremely low birth weight, they might not have been able to do the autologous transplant anyways.  However, if Duke University does contact us and is able to do a transfusion with donated umbilical cord stem cells, I will definitely write a post on here to update everyone.  The ability to do this type of transfusion may take awhile in the USA, so my best advice would be to start conducting your own research on what is available in other countries.