I guess one of the most common questions among mummy groups is “what did you do with your baby bonus?”. I actually love answering this question as I am so proud of the decision we made.

From the very start we told ourselves that the baby bonus was not ours, we wanted it to 100% go to the baby and pay for things he may need and the rest would go in the bank.

I heard about stemcell storage on the news and in a few magazine articles but didn’t know much about the process or cost. I did a Google search and emailed a few companies and we both sat down and read the information. As soon as we did this we knew there was no going back. We had thoughts of the future and worried if anything happened to our son and we had decided against stemcell storage then we would forever have to live with that bad decision.

The next step was choosing a company. There are about 5 companies so we requested all of their info kits and based our decision on their policy, the quality of their marketing material and the friendliness of their customer service staff. As this is such a new procedure I could not find any reviews on any companies only a few threads in baby forums asking about them with no responses.

We finally decided on StemLife out of all of them StemLife had the most professional marketing kit that was packed full of information. They had great prices and were very friendly, polite and helpful on the phone.

The process was so smooth and easy. We had a fantastic collection nurse and everything went according to plan. We now have our sons stemcells stored and a little bit more peace of mind knowing that if anything happened we have the possibility of helping him.

I do not regret our decision at all, sure I would have loved a new TV or some new things for around the home but to us that money was for our baby. We could afford to buy all of his nursery items and wanted to use the baby bonus for something with real benefit to him even if it is never used.

Jen xx

I will write a larger article on Stemcell collection and the process, so stay tuned!