Quite honestly, I don't know a whole lot about it other than the insane number of advertisements I get about it. I have a friend who just had a baby two days ago, and during her pregnancy she posted all sorts of "crunchy mom" stuff on Facebook. Though I wouldn't consider myself a crunchy mom, I found everything she posted interesting, if not educational.

There was an article she posted a month or two back, supposedly written by an OB, about how banking your baby's cord blood denies your baby the stem cells that would otherwise go into his/her bloodstream before the cord is cut.

Also, and I'm not sure about this allegation, I've read somewhere (perhaps in the same article) that just because *you* bank your baby's cord blood does not mean that you get to use the cord blood/stem cells if you need them. The advertising would make it seem that way (or at least it seems that way to me). If what I read is true, it's like when you donate blood, where it's not put aside for your use later but for general use, but in this case if you need it, you have access to what's been banked, even if it's not from your baby's umbilical cord.

Let me see if I can find that info - if I can, I'll add another post.

ETA the link to that article - it comes from New Zealand, and I guess I remembered it wrong that it was written by an OB (I'm not sure if the author is a medical professional or not) - but it contains info about stem cells in breast milk and has the mention about cord blood banking. Not sure of the reliability, but you can read and decide: http://www.beyondconformity.org.nz/_blog/Hilary's_Desk/post/Breastmilk_stem_cells/

EATA a link to the article I'd been reading recently on Parents (I guess these weren't that hard to find!): http://www.parents.com/pregnancy/my-baby/cord-blood-banking/the-cord-blood-controversy/

I'm a big supporter of delayed cord clamping. When you cut the cord prematurely, your baby is losing a decent portion of blood that it would otherwise receive. From what I've read that's one of the reasons for after birth weight loss. Let your kid have his/her blood, rather than forcing the body to make it back up.