Maia Friedlander was the first NZ child to be successfully treated with her own cord blood after suffering brain damage at birth.
Thankfully her parents, Jillian and Daniel, had this option because they had saved Maia’s cord blood stem cells with CordBank at her birth. These precious stem cells were re-infused when Maia was four years old and the results were life changing for her and her family.
Maia’s parents have a simple message for all expectant parents:
“You never know what can happen at your child’s birth or in their lives. But when you have their cord blood stored you have options.
Bank your baby’s cord blood with CordBank. You only get one chance and it’s a decision you’ll never regret.”
Scientists in London have developed a blood test which can detect which babies deprived of oxygen at birth are at risk of serious disabilities.
The Imperial College team working with groups in India, Italy and the USA say the prototype test looks for certain genes being switched on and off that are linked to long term neurological issues such as cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
The research was carried out in Indian hospitals, where there are around 0.5-1.0 million cases of birth asphyxia (oxygen deprivation) per year.
Babies can suffer oxygen deprivation at birth for a number of reasons, including when the mother has too little oxygen in her blood, infection, or through complications with the umbilical cord during birth.
A clinical trial, using cord blood, lithium and physical therapy to treat the most severe forms of spinal cord injury has been given the green light from the FDA.
The experimental treatment does not cure paralysis but is the first to help people with complete chronic spinal cord injuries to regain some ability to walk.
It includes doses of umbilical cord mononuclear blood stem cells and lithium, coupled with intensive physical therapy, which stimulates severed spinal cord nerve fibres to regenerate.
The treatment was first tested in a trial led by Dr Wise Young, the founding director of the Keck Center and the Richard H. Shindell Chair in Neuroscience at Rutgers.
Held between 2009-2014 in Hong Kong and China, the results showed that 15 of 20 participants walked with a wheeled walking frame and 60 percent recovered some bowel and bladder control.
“We don’t have a cure but a very promising and unprecedented therapy,” said Wise Young,
“We aren’t returning people back to their pre-injury state, but this is the first therapy to restore significant function in these patients.”
The study appeared in the journal Cell Transplantation in 2016.
Researchers are piloting the use of an umbilical cord blood therapy to help Covid patients battling pneumonia.
The trial team at Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne is currently working with confirmed Covid patients who have moderate to severe pneumonia, until the end of the year.
They are trying to find out if the cord blood therapy can stop the Covid induced pneumonia progressing to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS).
ARDS is one of the key causes of fatalities among Covid sufferers.
Although Leyla’s brain injury was diagnosed before she was born, no-one told her parents about cord blood banking.
But when her baby sister Ela was born in 2018, they not only collected her cord blood but also enrolled in a new trial at Duke University Medical Centre – using sibling cord blood for brain injury.
The therapy is offered for children with various brain disorders under a new FDA-approved Expanded Access Program.
Nine months after the treatment, Leyla’s parents say they’ve seen significant improvements in her speech and energy levels.
“Before the infusion, she couldn’t make sentences and now she’s saying a different word every single day,” Romanska said. “She’s putting three-word phrases together; her speech therapists are amazed.”
Her mother also revealed she’s seen a dramatic increase in Leyla’s energy levels. Before treatment, she would easily fatigue after 15 to 20 minutes of doing simple tasks like going for a walk to the park or grocery shopping.
“I’m shocked. Leyla is like a typical child now,” Romanska said. “She can go from our house to the park and she’s full of energy, full of smiles. I’m just blown away with how the cord blood has helped with that.”
Turns out mums aren’t naturally good at multitasking – they have no choice but to get good at it! New research debunks the suggestion women are innately better at it than men, finding both men and women’s brains are equally strained by doing many things at once. Read more here.
As a first time mother and parent, the overwhelming love and joy you have for your pending arrival swallows you with happiness – more than you can ever put into words. Your eager anticipation over the next nine months; that first flutter, the first kick, hearing your baby’s heart beat through the sonogram for the very first time; his ten fingers and ten toes wiggling around like a worm, is it a girl, is it a boy, will we wait for the surprise? The heart burn, the cramp, the going to bathroom ten times in an hour, the lack of sleep preparing you for the 4th trimester, it’s all worth it. Your little miracle will soon be in your nurturing hands, you will grow together, learn, develop and begin to understand each other in ways that only a parent can describe. The love and the surge of power that came with holding our baby for the first time was an indescribable feeling – surreal in fact; this incredible feeling in body, mind and spirit that comes, knowing that we are now his guides, his protector, his leader and his strength. We are his Mummy and Daddy from this day forward.
Amy & Baby Arthur
Needless to say leading up to D-day, my brain was a scrambled mess of information. Endless nights of scrolling through Dr Google, to your midwife handing out pamphlets, my grey matter was in severe overload, I even attempted to read a number of baby books aka “Parenthood for dummies 101”. I remember the night before deciding that I should probably learn the different techniques on how to breastfeed, ha what a joke, who was I fooling! However the one thing I was certain of was that we were going to save our babies cord blood stem cells.It was a unanimous decision my partner and I made together, and we will always be grateful that we were fortunate enough to have this option available to us in New Zealand. Without dwelling on the negative, we took everything into account. We weighed up the pros and cons (and to be honest my list on the cons side was pretty scarce.) We asked ourselves what would happen if our little boy got sick and if the only way his illness could possibly be treated was by using his cord blood stem cells. To us this was an absolute no brainer, why not future-proof our child’s life and have this available. If the cost of a latte every day from my local, equated to this life changing medical therapy, and it came down to this, I would easily give up that latte for the sake of our child’s health.
However what baffled me was out of the thirteen parents in our antenatal class, a) I was the only one that had taken this into consideration, and b) the majority of the class had not been informed by their midwife that this was an option.
Baby Arthur
Shouldn’t this just be mandatory for everyone? Yes there is a cost involved, but what a small price to pay when it comes to your child’s health. With all the many pamphlets, books, magazines I had read on various other things concerning our child’s health, we knew for certain, that from the moment I typed in “Cord Blood New Zealand”, we were safely investing in the security of our child’s future.
To any new parents and friends of ours that are having a baby, we urge you to make this investment. The best decision we have made together, knowing that if we ever need to draw down on this precious cord blood, we can.
Written by Amy.
Having published and edited some of the most influential lifestyle magazines both in New Zealand and in New York, it’s little wonder Claire has an excellent ability to create inspiring editorial content. As Denizen’s Editor-in-chief, she is firmly placed at New Zealand’s authority on the art of living well and is widely regarded as an authoritative figure in the design community.
By banking my own children’s stem cells, I am not only acknowledging the indisputably impressive progress that science has made in the advancement of quality human life, but am also doing the very best I can for my child.
The ongoing evolution and advancement in scientific research provides compelling reason to consider banking a newborn baby’s cord blood. Amidst all the hype and anticipation that surrounds the decision to embark upon starting a family is quite possibly one of life’s scariest realisations.
For it was not until my husband and I made the decision to jump blindly aboard the child rearing express that we realised that we had entered an infinite period of worry. Life before children is utterly carefree and brimming with self-indulgence, but from the very moment that the decision is made, either by you, or for you, to breed, you have unwittingly welcomed worriment into your daily life.
What start as short periods of apprehension – “Will I make it through the first trimester? Will the 20-week scan be clear of any issues? Will my baby inherit my husband’s sixth toe?”- soon develop into what can only be described as mild paranoia, relentlessly fuelled by the griping, heart-wrenching stories of others as regularly featured in the Sunday Downers a.k.a. 60 Minutes.
Living with worry
And so it is that we come to accept and live with the fact that forever more (I don’t imagine it’s something that ever dissipates) we will worry for our children, and in particular we will worry for their health.
It’s largely this burgeoning worry that delivered me to my old mate and late-night bed pal Dr Google, to learn more of all manner of problems and possible solutions in order to ease the lingering anguish.
Long term peace of mind
It was here that I chanced upon a miracle of sorts, an insurance policy that can only be described as a saving grace for my long-term peace of mind. Cordbank is a New Zealand-owned entity that offers locals the opportunity to collect and store their newborn baby’s cord blood. Understanding what this means is where it gets a little scientific, but basically stem cells are, in essence, the master cells of human life. They are responsible for the creation of organs, tissues, blood and the body’s immune system. At the time of birth, leftover cord cells that are still in their purest form, remain in the newborn baby’s umbilical cord. Typically discarded, those who choose to bank their child’s cord blood can request that the doctor extract this all-important blood, which is then swiftly sent off to Cordbank’s state-of-the-artfacilities for testing, freezing and longterm storage.
Having the ability to call upon this cord blood should the unthinkable ever arise, means as parents you have access to the purest form of your baby’s precious stem cells that can be potent enough to change the outcome of a number of illnesses, ailments or injuries that could materialise at any stage in life.
Options should disaster strike
Offering hope in the fight against all manner of horrors for any parent, from brain injury, Type 1 diabetes, autism, hearing loss, spinal injury, post cancer treatment or the reversal of paralysis, for me the decision to opt for cord banking my son’s stem cells was an absolute no brainer. The fact that I am storing what are essentially the exact building blocks of my son – a sample that can be called upon at any time, allowing us to take advantage of therapy that could essentially transform an otherwise dire outcome – is the ultimate in peace of mind. While many may dispute this suggesting that it is a complete waste of money and an effort to play on the fears of parents who may never even make use of it; as someone with a science degree, I refute this. My view is that we should be eternally grateful for the evolution of mankind and the stellar progress that many medical and research professionals are making to ensure that we actually do have options available to us should disaster strike. To read of the cases where stem cells have been successfully re-introduced to an ailing adult or child, only to result in a complete turn-around from what was an otherwise grim situation, is encouragement enough for me.
Everyone knows that parenting matters. But which behaviours have the most impact when it comes to the success and happiness of children?
Author of the “Life Project” Helen Pearson says the answer can be found in cohort studies, which monitored the lives of British people since 1946.
The research showed that it comes down to 7 key behaviours that make the most difference. And the happy news is that most of them are entirely within the reach of any parent, no matter their means.
- Talking to and listening to your kids
- Making it clear you have ambitions for their future
- Being emotionally warm
- Teaching them letters and numbers
- Taking them on excursions
- Reading to them daily (and encouraging them to read for pleasure)
- Maintaining a regular bedtime
And while these seem obvious, it’s this kind of basic but essential parenting that can get lost in the busy-ness of modern life.
Take the concept of quality time, for example. These days many parents are so stressed about having quality time with their kids that they schedule countless activities and bonding experiences. Meanwhile, science shows “quality time” just means quiet moments where you really listen to and respond to your child. Which is, of course, just the sort of thing you crowd out when you’re frantically driving between soccer practice and cello lessons all day.
“Parenting matters,” Pearson declares
While she admits that she was often so busy with work she barely had time for a proper conversation with her three boys. Since writing about the cohort studies she now always sets aside 15 minutes every night to talk to them about their days. And then she makes them go to bed.
“When you’re shouting at your kids to go to bed on time, it really helps to have the scientific literature on your side,” she jokes to knowing audience laughter.
The cohort studies show parental behaviours like these, which are simple to understand if sometimes difficult to maintain day to day, close the gap between kids with the best and worst starts in life by a startling 50 percent (for the other 50 percent only social and political solutions will do).
When it comes to parenting, the little things matter and they matter a lot. You already know how to be a good parent, and it has nothing to do with fancy enrichment activities or tiny choices about which way your stroller faces. Now all you have to do is execute on it.