“I’m gonna stand on a mountain top, and tell the news…”

Posted Sep 29, 2009 6:14pm
Hello friends! We’re back from Arizona safe and sound. Sarai did GREAT in the planes, all weekend really. She had everyone wrapped around her tiny fingers. (Actually, not so tiny these days. We had a doctor’s appointment today and she weighed in at 7lbs 14 oz! But that was with her diaper and onesie on.) It was so HOT out there! Don’t believe what people say about dry heat not being as bad, it was really not and the sun was brutal! It cooled down nicely at night. It was great to spend the weekend with Katie and Sarai. Katie had a ball passing Sarai off as her own. Humph. I made her from scratch!

We met some really nice people this weekend too; Parents who are involved with CBR because of how passionate they are about the possibilities cord blood has for saving peoples’ lives. We also met some parents who have also used their child’s cord blood, like we did. You may remember from way back, after Sarai was diagnosed with PVL, that my cousin Julie sent me an article about Chloe Levine, a little girl with Cerebral Palsy who was reinfused with her cord blood at Duke. Well, I met Chloe’s parents, Ryan and Jenny! That was a really wonderful feeling, kind of coming full circle.

I met Sherry Barker, my cord blood sister! She was such a doll (I had no idea how funny she was!). She’s the Transplant Coordinator that really held our hands through the reinfusion process. She was wonderful.

We met the founder and CEO of Cord Blood Registry, Tom Moore. What a smart, down to earth and amazing man! I can’t even fathom coming up with the idea for this company, he was so ahead of his time. But there it is. He’s got an amazing staff who are all hopelessly devoted to doing the best job possible for their clients.

So, as you can imagine, I’m now hopelessly devoted to telling people how important it is to bank cord blood. They told us it’s estimated that 1:217 people will need their cord blood in their lifetime, and those odds will just increase as more and more research is done and more conditions are found to be treatable with cord blood. The bottom line is, I just CAN’T imagine how I’d feel if we found out we could have used Sarai’s cord blood and we didn’t have it.

I hope that if you know anyone who’s expecting a baby that you’ll pass our story on and tell them how important banking cord blood is. If you know anyone who has a question, send them my way! I’ll talk to anyone, and once I’m on this soap box, I can go on and on! And if you know anyone who decided to bank with CBR, I have a “mom code” that can get them $250 off. (MSARI) Time to take this seriously!

I swear I won’t turn this blog into a CBR commercial, but I had to put it out there.

Adam and I took Sarai to Friday’s tonight, our first trip to a restaurant. She had her pulmonology appointment today, that was fine. They’re ordering a pneumogram (she had one in the hospital) to see how she’s breathing to be sure it’s safe to take her off the caffeine and the prevacid (she’s now on prevacid because we couldn’t find liquid prilosec). Tomorrow her speech person comes, Thursday a woman comes to work with infant massage with me, Friday Katie and Mom come down to go look at a wedding dress for Katie in Connecticut. Whew, busy as bees!