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I was 32 weeks pregnant when my son stopped kicking on a Tuesday. By Friday I knew he was gone. By Sunday I learned what killed him. His name was Hudson. I'm sharing this because I'm pregnant again. And I almost didn't write it. But if I'd read something like this six months ago, my son would still be alive. I want every pregnant woman reading this to read it twice. My husband Mark and I got married three years ago. We bought our first house the year after. A small starter home on a quiet street. Two bedrooms upstairs, one bathroom, a finished basement Mark turned into his office. A backyard with a maple tree I told him I wanted to bury our placenta under one day, which he thought was disgusting and I thought was beautiful. I got pregnant on the second try. I cried in the bathroom at 6:14 AM on a Wednesday in March. Two pink lines. I sat on the toilet seat lid and stared at the stick for twenty minutes. Then I went into the bedroom and woke Mark up and shoved it in his face and he sat up and looked at me and said are you serious three times before he believed me. We told our parents that weekend. His mom cried. My mom cried. My dad gave Mark a handshake that lasted too long. I texted my best friend Lauren and she screamed into the phone and I sat in my car in the Target parking lot and just let her scream. I was 6 weeks pregnant. I had no idea what was about to happen. The first trimester was hard. I threw up every morning for nine weeks straight. I ate plain bagels for breakfast for two months. I slept on the couch some nights because the smell of Mark's deodorant made me gag. But I loved it. Every time I felt sick I told myself it was a good sign. My doctor said nausea meant a healthy pregnancy. I texted Lauren every time I threw up. She told me I was glowing. I felt anything but glowing. I felt amazing. At 12 weeks we got the NIPT results back. It was a boy. I cried for three hours. I'd always thought I wanted a girl. But the second the nurse said boy on the phone, I knew that was wrong. I'd always been waiting for him. That night Mark and I sat on the couch with my laptop open and we picked his name. Hudson. It was Mark's grandfather's name. The grandfather Mark lost when he was seven. The grandfather Mark talked about every Christmas. The grandfather Mark named our dog after first but my mother in law said we couldn't do that to grandpa. Hudson Mitchell. We said it out loud about fifteen times that night. Hudson Mitchell. Hudson James Mitchell. Hudson, dinner. Hudson, time for bed. Hudson, slow down. I went to bed and put my hand on my belly and said it again. Hudson. He was 4 inches long. He had a name now. The second trimester I started feeling him. It happened during a meeting at work. I was on a Zoom call and I felt this little flutter, like a goldfish flipping inside me, and I said oh my god out loud and my boss thought I was reacting to her numbers. I texted Mark immediately. He just kicked. By 22 weeks Mark could feel it from the outside. He'd lay his head on my belly every night before bed and talk to Hudson. He talked about the Cubs. He talked about teaching him to drive a stick shift. He talked about how to throw a slider. He talked about how Hudson was lucky he got me as a mom. I would lay there pretending to be annoyed and instead I would just cry quietly so he wouldn't see. We started the nursery at 24 weeks. I picked the color. Soft sage green. Mark said it looked like a hospital. I told him it looked like the inside of a leaf. We argued about it for ten minutes and then he painted it sage green because he loved me. I bought a crib from a small company online. White spindles. Convertible to a toddler bed. I bought sheets in cream with little gold stars. I bought one of those baskets that hangs on the side of the crib for diapers and wipes. I bought him a stuffed bunny. I didn't tell Mark about the bunny. It was just for me. It sat on his crib mattress for the eight weeks before he came and the four months after he didn't. I still have it. At 28 weeks I had my baby shower. Twenty two women in my mother in law's backyard. Lemonade with mint. A cake shaped like a onesie. Lauren made me cry by saying I was going to be the best mom she'd ever met. My mother cried. My grandmother cried. Mark's mom cried. I cried so much during my third trimester I felt like I was going to dehydrate. The car seat went in the car at 30 weeks. Mark installed it on a Saturday afternoon and made me sit in the back seat and pretend to be the baby while he buckled in an imaginary version of Hudson and I laughed so hard I peed a little. The hospital bag went by the door at 31 weeks. The dog had stopped sleeping in our room around then. He was sleeping in the basement now, which was weird because he'd slept on Mark's feet every night for six years. I figured he was hot upstairs. I figured wrong. The Sunday before everything happened, Hudson kicked so hard my coffee cup shook. I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the news on my phone. Mark was making eggs. I felt him hit me from the inside and the cup of decaf on the table actually moved. I yelled for Mark. He came over and put his hand on my belly and Hudson kicked his palm. Mark looked up at me and his eyes got wet. He's gonna be a soccer player. That's what he said. That's the last memory I have of Hudson being alive. The week after the kick I started getting headaches. I figured it was the heating. The furnace had kicked on for the season the week before. The air felt drier. I drank more water. I took Tylenol. I called my doctor and her nurse told me to just rest more. Mark slept past his alarm two days in a row. He blamed work stress. He'd been on a big project. He was running on coffee. He kept saying he was tired in a way he hadn't been tired before. I was tired too. But I was 32 weeks pregnant. I was supposed to be tired. On Monday I stood in the kitchen at 3 AM and couldn't remember why I was there. I'd come down to get water. I think. I just stood there in front of the sink for what must have been ten minutes. The clock above the stove said 3:14 and I stared at it and couldn't make my brain do the math on how long I'd been standing there. I went back to bed. I was breathing it the whole time. So was Mark. So was Hudson. Tuesday morning I woke up at 7 and Hudson hadn't kicked yet. He kicked every morning between 7 and 7:30. Like clockwork. He was so consistent I'd started telling Lauren he was already on a schedule. I went into the kitchen and made decaf and waited. Nothing. I drank cold water. I lay on the couch on my left side. I pressed on my belly the way the books told you to. I tried to wake him up. Nothing. I told myself he was sleeping. I told myself I was being paranoid. I texted Lauren and she said don't panic. I texted my mom and she said it was probably fine. I waited another hour. Nothing. I called my doctor at 11. The nurse said come in. I drove myself. That's the part I think about a lot. I drove myself. Mark was at work and I didn't want to bother him. I told myself I was being dramatic. I told myself it would be fine. I drove twenty minutes to the office with my hands at ten and two and my hand on my belly the whole time, asking him to kick. He didn't. The technician started the ultrasound and I watched her face. She moved the wand around for what felt like an hour. She didn't say anything. She moved it. She moved it again. She zoomed in. She switched to color flow. She kept moving it. She wouldn't look at me. She said I'll get the doctor. I was alone in the room for four minutes. I know it was four minutes because I watched the clock on the wall above the door and I counted every second. The doctor came in. She didn't sit down at the computer. She sat down on the rolling stool next to my head. She put her hand on my shoulder. She said Sarah. I'm so sorry. There's no heartbeat. I don't remember anything after that for about thirty minutes. I remember calling Mark from the parking lot. I remember telling him to come to the hospital. I remember him asking why and I said because Hudson is gone and Mark made a sound on the phone I have never heard another human being make. He came down on one knee in the hallway of the hospital like he was going to propose to me. That's the part I'll never forget. They induced labor that afternoon. I delivered Hudson the next morning at 4:47 AM. He was 4 pounds and 6 ounces. He was 17 inches long. He had Mark's nose. He had my eyebrows. He had so much dark hair I cried when I saw it because I'd been telling Lauren for months I thought he was going to be bald. The nurse asked if I wanted to hold him. I held him for four hours. I held him and I sang to him. I sang the lullaby my mother sang to me. I sang Twinkle Twinkle. I sang a Lana Del Rey song. I sang every song I'd been planning to sing to him for the last seven months. Mark sat next to me on the bed and put his head on my shoulder and we just stayed there with him until the nurse came in and asked if we were ready and we weren't ready and we said yes anyway because what else are you supposed to say. They took footprints. They took a lock of his hair. They gave us a memory box. We went home from the hospital with the car seat empty in the back. That's the worst drive of my entire life. Driving home from the hospital with an empty car seat. I sat in the passenger seat and stared at it the whole way and Mark didn't say a word. The autopsy was scheduled for Friday. I asked them why. The doctor said it was protocol for any third trimester loss without a clear cause. She used the word unexplained. She told me sometimes they never find out what happened. I went home and sat in the nursery. I sat in the rocking chair I'd bought from my mother in law's neighbor for forty dollars. I sat there and stared at the crib with the stuffed bunny on the pillow and the cream sheets with the gold stars and I rocked back and forth for I don't know how long. Mark found me at 2 AM. He sat on the floor next to the rocking chair and we didn't say anything to each other for an hour. Then he said I should have noticed something was wrong. I told him no. He told me he kept sleeping past his alarm. He told me he'd been having headaches for two weeks. He told me he'd thought it was work. I told him it was work. I told him it had to be. I told him there was nothing we could have done. I believed that for six weeks. The phone call came on a Wednesday afternoon. The OB's office. The receptionist said the doctor wanted Mark and me to come in together as soon as possible. She wouldn't say more on the phone. We sat in her office the next morning at 10 AM. She didn't sit behind her desk. She sat next to us on the couch in her office. She had a folder in her lap. She had a tissue box on the coffee table that she pushed toward me. She said Sarah. Mark. I have the autopsy report. There's something I need to tell you. She opened the folder. She said Hudson's cause of death was intrauterine hypoxia. That means his body couldn't get oxygen. We see this sometimes with cord accidents or placental failures. But in Hudson's case there was no cord accident. There was no placental failure. The placenta was actually healthy. I asked what that meant. She said it means his blood couldn't carry oxygen. And when the toxicology came back this morning, we found out why. Hudson's cord blood showed elevated carboxyhemoglobin. That's the marker for carbon monoxide. His level was 32 percent. Anything over 25 percent in a fetus is considered fatal. I didn't understand. She kept going. She said carbon monoxide is a gas. You can't see it. You can't smell it. It comes from anything that burns fuel in your house. Your furnace. Your water heater. Your stove. Your dryer. When you breathe it in, it binds to your blood where oxygen is supposed to go. She paused. She put her hand on mine. And here's the part I have to be honest with you about. She said the same thing happens in the baby. Except in a baby it's worse. Hudson's blood held the carbon monoxide five times longer than yours did. His level was higher than yours would have been. Even when your blood was clean from breathing it out, his was still saturated. I think I asked her how I didn't know. She said because you wouldn't have felt much. CO at low levels feels like a headache. It feels like pregnancy fatigue. It feels like a bad cold. The classic symptoms don't show up until you're at exposure levels that would kill most adults. But a fetus doesn't have that buffer. By the time you would have felt sick enough to call me, Hudson would have already been suffocating for hours. Mark made a sound on the couch next to me. She kept going. She said and here's the part you need to understand. Even when you stopped being exposed. Even on a day the heat was off. Even when your blood cleared. Hudson's didn't. He kept holding the CO for five times longer than you did. So every time the furnace ran, Hudson's level went up. And in between, it didn't come down fast enough. She looked at me. She said Hudson didn't die suddenly. Hudson died slowly. Over weeks. While you were doing everything right. I asked her what we needed to do. She said the fire department was going to come to our house. She said they would test the air. She said we should not go home tonight. She said we should stay with my parents. The fire department came the next morning. Mark and I met them at the house. Two men. One was probably in his 30s. The other was older, maybe my dad's age, and he introduced himself as Captain Reyes. He took off his cap when he walked in. They went into the basement with a meter. They were down there for forty minutes. Captain Reyes came up. He didn't sit. He stood in our kitchen and looked at me carefully and said Mrs. Mitchell. Your furnace has a cracked heat exchanger. About three inches long. Carbon monoxide has been venting through the cracks and going straight up into your ductwork. Every time the furnace ran, it pumped CO into every room of this house. Including your bedroom. I asked him how long. He said based on the crack pattern and the corrosion, at least three months. Maybe longer. He set down the meter. He said Mrs. Mitchell. I have to be honest with you. Heat exchangers crack from age. From stress. From the metal expanding and contracting every time the furnace fires up. It happens to brand new units. It happens to ten year old units. It happens silent. You can't see it. You can't smell it. The furnace runs perfectly. The flame looks normal. The thermostat works. You have heat. Everything seems fine. Meanwhile carbon monoxide is going straight into every room of your house. He paused. And the worst part is, this is how most carbon monoxide deaths happen. Not from heat exchangers exploding. Not from one big leak. From small cracks. Small cracks that leak slow. Small cracks that leak low enough to never trigger your detector. But high enough to suffocate a baby in the womb. I asked him about the detector. The white plug in detector in the hallway upstairs. The one I'd checked every month. The one with the green light I'd seen every single night for the eight months we'd lived in this house. He asked me to bring it to him. I unplugged it from the hallway and brought it down. He held it in his hands. He said this detector is working. The sensor is fine. The battery is fine. The green light is on. The test button works. I didn't understand. He said ma'am. These cheap detectors are designed to barely meet a federal regulation. They are legally allowed to stay silent until carbon monoxide hits 70 parts per million. And even then, they can wait up to 4 hours before they make a sound. He looked at me. He said the readings in your bedroom over the last three months were probably between 20 and 50 PPM. Spiking higher when the heat was on. Dropping back down when it was off. Never quite hitting 70. So this detector did exactly what it was designed to do. He held it up. It stayed silent. I asked him what 70 PPM even meant. He said it means the law allows your detector to ignore the very levels that kill fetuses. The standard was written for adults. Healthy adults. Not for pregnant women. Not for babies. Not for anyone whose body can't tolerate slow exposure over weeks. Mark was sitting at the kitchen table now. He had his face in his hands. The captain looked at him. He said sir. This is not your fault. This is not your wife's fault. This is the fault of a regulation written 40 years ago for a world that doesn't include the science we have now. You did everything you were supposed to do. You had a detector. You checked it. You pressed the test button. The problem is the detector is not actually designed to protect a pregnant woman. He set it on the kitchen table. He said that green light on the front. It just means power. It does not mean safe. It does not mean anything. The test button only tests the speaker. It does not test the sensor. The sensor inside could be dead and that button would still beep. The light would still glow. You would never know. He looked at me. He said most of the detectors in homes are the same as the one you have. The same federal standard. The same 70 PPM threshold. The same 4 hour delay. And they're all blind to natural gas and propane. He paused. Mrs. Mitchell. If you ever get pregnant again, I am begging you. Do not trust the white plastic on the wall. It was not built for a baby. I asked him what we should do. He pulled a different detector out of his bag. He set it on the kitchen table. He said this is what we use in the firehouse. This is what most of the guys on my crew have on their walls at home. It's called the Dewlora 4 in 1. It uses what's called a grade 3 sensor. Same grade we use in our professional equipment. He turned it over. He said it alarms way earlier than the cheap ones. Before symptoms hit. It has a digital screen. Real numbers. You see exactly what's in your air at any moment. Zero means safe. If it's not zero, you know. Then he said the part that I think about every morning now. He said and it doesn't just see carbon monoxide. It sees natural gas. It sees propane. It sees combustible gases. Your old detector was blind to all of that. So even if the leak in your house had been a gas line instead of a CO leak, your old detector wouldn't have made a sound either. He looked at me. He said if you ever get pregnant again, please. This is the one you put on your wall. I bought four that night. One in the hallway. One in the bedroom. One in the basement. One in the nursery. We didn't talk about trying again for nine months. The nursery stayed exactly the way it was the night Hudson died for almost six months. The sage walls. The crib with the cream sheets and the gold stars. The stuffed bunny on the pillow. The closet full of onesies still folded by size from my baby shower. I went into that nursery once a week and sat in the rocking chair and cried and rocked and cried and rocked. Mark wouldn't go in at all for the first three months. In month four, he started going in with me sometimes. In month six, on a Saturday afternoon, he carried the bunny into our bedroom and put it on my nightstand. He said I think Hudson would want him with you instead. I cried for three hours. Then I cried again. Then in month nine I peed on a stick at 6:14 in the morning. Two pink lines. I called Mark at work. He said are you serious three times before he believed me. I'm 19 weeks pregnant right now. It's a girl. I look at the Dewlora screen on my nightstand every single morning before I get out of bed. I look at it every single night before I fall asleep. I check it before I leave the house. I check it when I come back. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero. Mark's mom keeps asking when we're going to paint the nursery. I told her we're not painting it yet. We're not buying anything yet. We're not naming her yet. Not until we get past 32 weeks. That's the number that lives in my head. 32. The number Hudson didn't get past. I know I'll never feel safe in my own house again. I know I'll wake up at 3 AM and walk to the nursery and put my hand on the Dewlora and read the number for the rest of my life. But I know now what I didn't know before. I know what killed my son. And I know what would have saved him. I'm sharing this because every single woman who is pregnant right now reading this needs to know what no one told me. If you have a CO detector on your wall, please look at it tonight. Is it a small white circle with a green light? If it is, you have no idea what's in the air your baby is breathing. The test button doesn't test the sensor. The green light only means power. And the federal standard is letting that detector stay silent at levels that kill fetuses every single year. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a salesperson. I'm a mother who held her dead son for four hours in a hospital room and then drove home with an empty car seat. I'm telling you what I wish someone had told me. Please. Don't trust the green light. The detector Captain Reyes recommended is linked below for who ever is interested. https://trydewlora.com/pages/pregnancy-safety It's what's on my wall now. What Captain Reyes has on his wall. What the men and women in his firehouse have on theirs. Grade 3 sensors. The fastest alarming on the market. A real screen that shows real numbers. Catches carbon monoxide, natural gas, propane, and combustible gases. All four. While you sleep. While your baby grows. It's the only detector I will ever trust again. If you are pregnant right now. If you are trying to get pregnant. If anyone you love is pregnant. Please don't wait until you are sitting on your porch watching the fire department air your house out. I can't bring Hudson back. But maybe I can save your daughter. Or your son. By the time my blood was clean. His was still drowning. Don't be me. Please. 🤍