Cord Blood Donation

During pregnancy a lot of crazy things happen in your body; you grow a whole person, that's pretty amazing! With growing that person, you also grow a few extra bits that allow baby to live inside of you; your placenta and umbilical cord. Once baby is out and their own individual, separate from you, those 'extras' pretty much become waste. Midwives do say that you can keep and eat your placenta should you wish; it's not something that has ever appealed to me personally, but it is personal choice.

As these bits come out of your body, they contain blood and are highly rich in it too! This blood has a high content of stem cells which can help cure a variety of life-threatening illnesses by helping to restore a patients immune and blood-producing systems. Stem cells from 'cord blood' are very similar to those found in bone marrow and so are crucial in the battle against diseases like leukaemia.

The NHS run a cord-blood bank but only in a limited amount of areas. This is a public cord-blood bank, which means that should you 'donate' your blood, it becomes public domain and can be used on any patient, there are also private cord-blood banks which charge a fee (one-off and annual) which makes your blood available to you only. A lot of people opt to use a private bank by way of security incase someone in their family is taken ill with a stem-cell-taxable illness which is perfectly fine.

That said, when I found out about this, I really wanted to donate my cord blood to the NHS. I give blood, I'm an organ donor and as a parent, I would like to hope that if one of my children was taken ill, someone would've donated something that could save them. I can't afford to store my cord blood privately, and I personally feel that it being available to everyone is better than it only being available to me. My Grandmother died from Leukaemia and so this is something important to me.

Unfortunately, I am not within the catchment area (though if I still lived in Hertfordshire, I would be), so as it stands, this is sadly not an option for me but it might be for you! Please take a look at the website if you're interested!

Clare

Money Supermarket Retail Royalty Challenge

At the beginning of July I stumbled across something that I was instantly interested in; Money Supermarket's Retail Royalty Challenge (#RetailRoyaltyChallenge). The well-known comparison and money-saving website was offering bloggers of all kinds to spend £30 on a local charity of their choice. I love charity fundraising, having previously run a shop and blog for a well-known British charity. I do a lot in my free-time for non-profit organisations and am hoping to volunteer at my local food bank at Christmas time. I grew up with a parent who relied heavily on the work and resources of charities and so I see working for free and raising awareness as a very important step in helping others.

Being a local charity challenge, I selected Demelza, a children's hospice covering London and the South East. I selected Demelza for multiple reasons; I'm a parent, my husband's aunt is the head of fundraising for our area and because it's important to us as a family. I hope that you never ned the help of a charity like Demelza, however for those that do, I cannot express the work they do and the difference they make to not just the lives of the children, but their families too. Providing much-needed respite and care, the staff of Demelza 'add life to days where days cannot be added to life'. It says it all really.

Money Supermarket kindly transferred £30 into my Paypal account and I contacted the head of fundraising for Sussex as well as the head of fundraising for Eastbourne (where I live). We decided that given the short time I had left of the challenge (I signed up late, typical me) that the best thing I could do was help the Eastbourne fundraising team stock for their up and coming tombola.

I contacted a lot of businesses, local and national, however time was running out and so I took matters into my own hands and headed to my local Sainsbury's instead. Here's what I got...

2x 3packs of bubbles - £2.50 each
1x ball game - £3
1x Disney colouring book - £1.99
2x skipping ropes - £1 each
2x Crayola colouring pencils - £2.99 (buy one get one free)
1x Play Doh toy - £2.99
2x scented candles - £2 each
1x fudge - £2
1x Lindt Lindor chocolates - £1.50
1x Ferraro Rocher chocolates - £1.50
1x feed the birds set - £3

I was really happy with what I got (especially the buy one get one free) as I was under a very tight time limit when I went (about ten minutes) and I had walked in with the goal of buying ten items for the tombola, I came away with fifteen!! I was thrilled that I got so much, my biggest concern at the moment is the chocolate and fudge melting, fingers-crossed on that one!

I'd like to say a big, big thank you to Money Supermarket, without their kind donation for this challenge, it would be £30 that the charity would've had to of found themselves and it went a long way towards their fundraising efforts for the summer holidays. To bolas and other stall events bring in a lot of money for charities, especially in a seaside town like Eastbourne.

If you would like to learn more about Demelza, take a look at their website.

Thank you for reading!

Clare