Stephen and Ellen Howell are very special CBR clients, not just because they banked with CBR five times, but those five were all born on the same day. This Houston family welcomed quintuplets Sidney, Mitchell, Luke, Ivy, and Briellen in 2008.

“I thought my life would be chaos—that babies would take over my world. But the reality is that it is not at all as crazy as I expected,” says Ellen. “I sleep at night, we go on trips, I go to lunch with my girlfriends. Of course at first we were living and breathing babies, but we are in a good routine.”

Ellen learned about cord blood banking through her sister who had already banked with CBR. She and her husband made the decision to bank for the quints at the last minute, which is why they advise other parents to plan ahead. The babies needed to be delivered urgently a few days short of 31 weeks so a CBR employee personally delivered the kits to the hospital so they could bank.

Ellen adds, “I hope we will never have to use it, but we have it if we do and with the research that is going on, we wanted to be able to do everything possible for our babies.”