How to Donate Cord Blood

A priceless donation that costs nothing

With a little bit of planning, you could change someone’s life: you could donate your baby’s umbilical cord blood to a public bank at no cost to you. Umbilical cord blood is rich with blood-forming cells*, cells that are no longer needed by your baby after delivery. But these cells may be needed by someone else — someone with a life-threatening disease like leukemia or lymphoma who needs a transplant to survive.

* The cells in cord blood are not embryonic stem cells.

How to donate cord blood to a public bank

Thank you for considering a donation of cord blood. The lifeline your baby needs now could one day serve as a lifeline for someone else. By following the steps below, you could donate to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Network of public cord blood banks, which is helping patients in need every day.

Before your 34th week of pregnancy

1. Talk with your doctor or midwife about your decision to donate umbilical cord blood.
2. Determine if your hospital collects donations of cord blood — Where to Donate.
3. If your hospital is listed, contact the public cord blood bank that works with your hospital. The cord blood bank will confirm if you are eligible to donate and give you a consent form and health questionnaire to complete. If your hospital is not listed, see the Cord Blood FAQs for other ways you may be able to donate cord blood.
4. Consent for your cord blood donation to be used as part of the NMDP research study. (We are conducting a research study on cord blood transplantation and patient outcomes to help improve transplant results for patients. Every cord blood unit on the NMDP's Be The Match Registry ^SM is included in our research study.)

While you are in the hospital

1. When you arrive, tell the labor and delivery team you are donating umbilical cord blood.
2. While you are giving birth, you and your baby are the focus of everyone’s attention.
3. After your baby is delivered:
   • The umbilical cord is clamped.
   • Blood from the umbilical cord and placenta is collected into a sterile bag, given an identification number and stored temporarily. This collected blood is called a cord blood unit.
4. A sample of your blood (not your baby’s) is tested for infectious diseases.
5. Within one or two days after your baby’s birth, the cord blood unit is delivered to the public cord blood bank.

What happens at the cord blood bank?

After the cord blood unit arrives at the cord blood bank, it is:

1. Tested to make sure it has no signs of infection or other medical concerns.
2. Checked to be sure is large enough (has enough blood-forming cells) to be used for a transplant. If there are too few cells, the cord blood may be used for research to improve transplants for future patients, or it may be discarded.
3. Tissue typed and listed on the Be The Match Registry. To protect your family’s privacy, the cord blood is identified by a number, never by name.
4. Frozen in a liquid nitrogen freezer and stored.

Once it is stored, it is available for a transplant if a patient needs it. Doctors search among the donated cord blood units and the bone marrow donors on the Be The Match Registry to find a match when their patient needs a transplant.