When Tracey Gibbons decided to save blood from the umbilical cord of her first child, Kayley, almost four years ago, she was one of the first women on the Island to do so.

Tracey and husband Chris had researched the issue over the Internet, but she admits she was met with blank looks when she mentioned the cutting edge idea to doctors and insurance companies in Bermuda.

But she was so sure of the potential benefits the stem cells could have if Kayley fell ill that she decided to do it again when their second child Toby was born 18 months ago.

Stem cell storage is not cheap.

The Cord Blood Registry in California charged the couple $295 to enrol each child, plus $995 to process and freeze the stem cells. Then there is an additional $95 each year to store the cells.

Stored stem cells can be used in the treatment of an increasing number of diseases, including leukaemia, and Mrs. Gibbons is convinced it is money well spent.

"It's insurance. For that amount of money, although it is not in everyone's budget, if you can afford it, why wouldn't you do it?," she said.

"It just seems a lost opportunity not to do it if you can afford to do it, given all the potential benefits.

"I know it is still at the experimental stage, but I had read quite a lot about the potential benefits and it just seems like one of those things that if your child is three or four and develops leukaemia and you hadn't done something when you could have, you'd never forgive yourself for not having made the effort.

"When I was pregnant with my first child, I did a lot of reading, and I must have got something off a website and I thought 'that sounds like a good thing to do'," said Mrs. Gibbons, a reinsurance underwriter with Allied World Assurance Company.

"It's a precautionary thing. You don't take vitamins if you get ill but to prevent it, and it is a similar thing with stem cells. You do something now for, if the child gets sick, then you will have something.

"It is quite an expensive thing to do and we did think about it seriously before taking the plunge, especially because it was not covered by medical insurance, but it does give you peace of mind.

"When I spoke to my obstetrician, Dr. Wendy Woods, I don't think she had done it before and she said: 'send me all the details'.

"They sent step-by-step information for physicians. When I mentioned this at the hospital they gave me blank looks to start with as well.

"When I asked the medical company if this was covered by insurance, they had no idea what I was talking about so it wasn't anything they had heard of before."

Stem cell storage is still a developing technology and in the United States, it is carried out by private companies.

But it is much more prevalent in the United Kingdom, and the British Government is considering taking stem cells from all new babies to form a national stem cell bank, said Mrs. Gibbons.

Talking to work colleagues, she found few were aware of the stem cell technology. And she is convinced that if more women in Bermuda knew about it, they would chose to make the investment in their child's future.

"I think there is a distinct lack of information among women about this," she said.

"I think you'd find the majority of young women haven't heard of because it has not been brought to their attention, but if people knew about the potential benefits, there would probably be a greater uptake."