37th Week

This morning we decided to have breakfast in Tanglin Halt market, after two weeks of craving for Hum Chin Peng (without red bean filling). What is Hum Chin Peng? Basically it is the same as Odading (Bandung), Kue Bantal (Jakarta) or Beignet (New Orleans, only without cinnamon and powdered sugar). This stall, located at the left side of the Tanglin Halt Market food court near the corner sell the best Kueh in the area. Along with the great Teh Tarik in the Muslim Stall at the right side of the market (sold by bearded old man), this made a great breakfast for today. The teh tarik is bubbly, but not too sweet nor too bitter. It just tastes great, and it makes you want to drink it over and over again.

BTW, the blood test that I mentioned last week came up normal. However, the doctor highlighted to me that I may be at the edge of pre-eclampsia / pregnancy induced hypertension, since my weight gain has been more than 2 pounds per week and the swelling has reached my thigh. He also noticed that my blood pressure is higher than usual, although still within normal range. The uric acid also at the higher end, although still within normal range. This shows a potential for pre-eclampsia, or that I have tendency for hypertension (yes, it runs in my family). The doctor said nothing much can be done except resting, likely I would need to take my maternity leave even before my baby boy is born – meaning, next week.

*Shrug* I have intended to work until the very last minute, since I only have 8 weeks of maternity leave, and I would rather spending the leave to take care of the baby, and not to rest myself. Yes, I think 8 weeks is too short for maternity leave.

I guess partly it’s also because of my eating habit. During this pregnancy I have been craving for mutton. Almost every afternoon in the office I lunched at the Malay stall that cooks spicy mutton dishes. Moreover, I only drink less than 1 liter of liquid while in office, partly because I just hate going to toilet so often. When I drink a lot of water nowadays, I would need to go to toilet every 20 minutes and the baby is pushing hard on to my bladder, creating a really bad urge to urinate. I suppose all these contribute to my higher blood pressure, and I try to rectify it by resting, drinking water, and eat more veggie, particularly cucumber (my mom’s advice), and obtain protein intake from somewhere else, not from mutton.

By the way, we are considering of banking our baby’s umbilical cord blood (UCB) stem cell, mainly because this is our first child, and this particular action could benefit the whole nuclear family (us and the future siblings). In case you are curious, there are two private cord blood banking facilities in Singapore, CordLife and StemCord, offering same service with same price.

After doing our preliminary research at Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Website (a really good non-biased website created by a practicing physician who lost her children), we visited both banks yesterday. In a nutshell, through our interaction with the salesperson, so far we have better impression over CordLife. The salesperson took her time to answer our queries (that we obtained from our research) no matter how technical it is. She even expressed her appreciation of our genuine interests in learning about the technical matter as much as possible. On the other hand, the StemCord salesperson did not seem to address our technical concerns of the product, and seemed to be interested only in selling his products; he was stiff and a bit on defensive side when Indi pulled out a long list of questionnaire. His answers were many times contradictory and indirect. Just to share our comparative study between the two we have the following:

Summary of Singapore Private Cord Blood Banks

Items	CordLife	StemCord
Initial Price	S$1100	S$1150 (with maternity clothes bonus)
Subsequent Years	S$250	S$250
Blood Retrieval	Triple bag, closed system. Not syringe - due to higher contamination possibility	Either syringe or triple bag, up to the doctor’s preference
Delivery to lab	Immediately after delivery through 24hr hotline	Next day if delivery is not during office hours. The blood is kept by hospital nurse until the next day.
Processing	Closed system, no contact with external environment	Unclear, not explained clearly
Storage Media	Bags with four separate compartments	Four separate vials (2 small + 2 medium)
Contamination	Not recommending storage for viral or bacterial contaminated sample. $500 refund if contaminated and not kept	Allowing storage for bacterial contaminated sample (The salesman said bacterial contamination is OK). No refund if sample is viral contaminated and not kept
Cell Count	Not recommending storage if cell count is less than 100 million - $500 refund if cell count is low and not kept	Not recommending storage if cell count is less than 200 million – full refund if cell count is low and not kept
Storage	Liquid Nitro for clean sample, Gas Nitro for contaminated sample	Liquid Nitro for clean sample, Gas Nitro for contaminated sample
Contract	All necessary clauses	All necessary clauses, plus capping storage price increase and not using our sample for own research
Others	Lab is viewable by clients (but not to be entered). Compliant and going for AABB accreditation. Acting as consultant for Singapore Cord Blood Bank (Public Bank).	Lab is not viewable by client, citing terrorist threats. Compliant to AABB but does not indicate intent to be accredited.

We haven’t fully decided yet, although we are inclined to CordLife at this moment. Anybody has experience? Please send us your comments.