Take a look at the How can I donate my umbilical cord? page.

Absolutely not. Donating cord blood is risk-free.

After you’ve safely delivered your baby and placenta, we’ll come in and take your cord and placenta to a separate room to extract the blood.

We have a finite number of people who can collect cord blood. In the unlikely situation that there are multiple births (from mums who have opted to donate) at the same time, we sometimes can’t collect from all of them. Any cord blood has to be collected immediately to be effective.

If this happens, your umbilical cord and placenta will be disposed of using standard NHS maternity procedures.

Other reasons we might not collect and bank your cord blood:

• there isn’t enough blood in your placenta and cord to collect
• your temperature has risen and you have an infection
• there’s a mechanical failure with the equipment used
• other medical issues

We can’t guarantee that we’ll bank your baby’s cord blood. We may not bank it if it does not contain enough stem cells to be considered suitable for transplantation. We will test your baby's cord to check the number of stem cells before banking it.