BabySenseDubai aims to provide support and sound educational advice to ensure confident, happy and healthy families. BabySenseDubai offers services to families. It was founded by Cecile de Scally, an experienced South African trained midwife, who qualified in 1990 and has more than 15 years of experience in antenatal and postnatal support and education. Cecile started the antenatal sessions with two other midwives in 1997 and the first postnatal and home visit program in 2004, at the American Hospital which was successful. Cecile have spoken at conferences in Dubai as well as written articles that have been published in a lot of local magazines. She had been a guest on the radio as well as on TV here in Dubai to talk about feeding and sleep. She set out to develop a more personal antenatal and postnatal education, advice and support system in the community, which she achieved over the past four years. Promoting normal birth where possible and ensuring parents make informed choices when birth may take a different path, assisting mothers to successful breastfeeding and establish good sleep habits. The lifesaving power of umbilical cord blood stem cells and the regenerative healing of cord tissue is no longer a secret. As stem cell treatments and research advance, more and more parents are opting to bank their newborn baby’s cord blood and tissue. Find out how stem cells are being used in medicine today. Umbilical cord blood is the blood remaining in the cord after your baby has been born and the cord has been cut and clamped. It contains valuable stem cells that can be used in a variety of medical treatments such as regenerating the immune system after chemotherapy. Stem cells are known as ‘the building blocks of life’. They have the unique ability to become other types of cells in the body such as the blood, nerve cells, muscle, bone, and cartilage. Why are umbilical stem cells so valuable? Cord blood stem cells can only be collected at birth, so it is important to make the decision to do cord tissue storage several weeks before your due date. Cord Tissue stored at birth have many advantages – they are readily available for your family if needed, they are considered to be the ‘youngest and freshest’ type of stem cell, and importantly there is a greater potential of a stem cell match between siblings. Stem cells from the cord blood have been used for more than 20 years for the treatment of a number of disorders of the blood such as leukemia, lymphoma and thalassemia, which previously had been treated with bone marrow. The umbilical cord blood collection process After the safe delivery of your child, your obstetrician or midwife cleans the umbilical cord (with the materials provided in the Cells4Life kit) and inserts the blood bag needle into the umbilical vein. The blood flows into the bag by gravity. The blood bag tubing is clamped, sealed and labeled to await courier collection. The whole process takes only a few minutes and causes no pain for mother or baby.