Cord Blood

In my brand new journey into parenthood, I've learned a lot! Several weeks ago, we went to our baby doctor for our 19 week sonogram. It seems that husbands/boyfriends are not the typical audience at these places. The magazine selection was slim pickens. Lots of cosmos, etc. with an occasional Sports Illustrated from, you know, the late 80's or 90's. The nurse who guided us through the sonogram described all the baby parts, head here, leg here, elbow here. Our baby would not show us the important organs, but instead wiggled and turned to avoid the question that was on all our minds- boy or girl??!! Finally, after what seemed an eternity, we discovered we were having a girl!

I have never heard of this until a few months ago when we were given a brochure, but we have the option of preserving our baby's cord blood. Cord blood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_blood), is blood extracted from the umbilica cord. It's very rich in stem cells and for a price we can preserve this blood which we may then use later in life should one of us develop some genetic diseases such as certain forms of cancer or degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. I don't think we're at risk for any of these, but I just wondered, has anyone else considered this or considered donating cord blood to a public bank?