Choosing to give birth at a private maternity hospital in London means you’ve already prioritised the best possible start for you and your baby. It also means you are in the ideal position to arrange cord blood banking  because at a private hospital, you have the time, the consultants, and the care team to plan ahead.

London is home to some of the UK’s most prestigious private maternity units, including The Portland Hospital, the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s, the Kensington Wing at Chelsea & Westminster, the Westminster Suite at St Thomas’, the Sir Stanley Clayton Ward at Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea, the Coombe Wing at Kingston Hospital, and the Fitzrovia Private Maternity Suite at University College Hospital. Smart Cells works with all of them.

Cord blood banking is only possible at the moment of birth, once the opportunity has passed, it cannot be recovered. The stem cells found in your baby’s umbilical cord blood are a unique biological resource, capable of treating over 80 conditions including leukaemia, lymphoma, and sickle cell disease, with research into further applications growing every year. Storing them costs nothing in terms of inconvenience — collection takes place during the third stage of labour and does not interfere with your birth plan in any way.

As the UK’s first cord blood bank, established in 2001, Smart Cells has collected at every major London private maternity hospital for over two decades. Our team coordinates directly with your consultant and midwife in advance, so that on the day everything runs smoothly. Whether you are booked at The Portland or a smaller private unit, the process is the same: we send your collection kit in advance, your clinical team performs the collection, and our courier collects the sample within hours of birth.

If you are unsure whether your chosen hospital is covered, contact us  in most cases it will be, and where a consultant needs to be briefed in advance, we will handle that for you.