Scroll to the bottom for some information on cordblood banking, if you are still in the midst of making a decision:
http://www.babycenter.com/mybabycenter/123.html
Impt/interesting notes extracted from the above article:
1) <font color="0000ff">Chances are your baby cannot be treated with his own cord blood.</font>
If your baby develops an illness with a genetic basis and most childhood diseases are genetic his cord blood contains the genetic instructions for that disease, so it's not a suitable treatment. Most banked cord blood is currently used to treat siblings.
2) <font color="0000ff">You probably have a better chance of finding a stem cell match in the public cord blood system than in your own family.</font>
The chance of an exact tissue match between two siblings is only about 25 percent, according to Dennis Confer, chief medical officer for the National Marrow Donor Program, a nonprofit organization that maintains the largest public listing of umbilical cord blood units available for transplantation in the United States. In contrast, the chance of finding a cord blood match in the nation's public banks is 75 percent, he says.
3) <font color="0000ff">Doctors aren't ready to universally recommend banking your baby's cord blood.</font>
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have both expressed reservations about private cord blood banking for the general public because they believe the chances a family will ever need the blood are slim and because they support a public cord blood donation system (similar to blood banks). Many doctors, however, say that families with a history of diseases such as leukemia, lymphomas, and immune deficiency, among others, should consider private cord banking because their odds of needing a stem cell transplant are higher than those of the general population.