Would you use a cord bank?
maineldc: Our first child is 11 weeks old now and we asked the same question to our pediatrician.  Her answer was that "neither she nor any other pediatrician she knows would do private banking at the moment".  I agree that public banking is the best idea and we were going to do that, but our child came 5 weeks early before we had a chance to set it up.The thing that became clear during this whole thing is there were going to be MANY times in the coming years when spending "only $3K just in case" was going to be offered and this seemed like a bad precedent to set.  The vast majority of children will never benefit from private banking, so go public!