Meet Jude
- Baby Saves
“My name is Lauren and I wanted to share my story using your app. My firstborn daughter Eden was born in October 2020 with trisomy 13, a life-limiting diagnosis that we found out about during my pregnancy. She passed away after 44 days with us.
About 4 months after she was born, we found out we were pregnant with our second baby. We were thrilled, but because of my loss I had a lot of anxiety during my pregnancy. For my entire pregnancy leading up to the end, my son looked very healthy and there were no complications.
Nonetheless I was very diligent about doing kick counts in my third trimester, as a way of getting to know my son’s typical patterns and also just to ease my anxiety. Using the Count the Kicks app made it easy to tell how many movements to expect from him in a given amount of time.
On Nov. 8, 2021, at 38 weeks, I noticed decreased movement from him and laid down on my left side at work and did a kick count. Normally lying on my left side would make him move more, but I only counted a few movements in an hour.
I called my OB office. The nurse on the phone assured me that my baby was probably just “running out of room,” but I asked if I could come in for a nonstress test. That test showed concerning patterns and I was sent to the hospital to deliver my son via C-section.
Jude was born pale and lethargic. He was discovered to be critically anemic due to a fetal-maternal hemorrhage, essentially meaning that his blood was being taken up by my blood. His hemoglobin was only 3.4, and testing showed that 105mL of his blood was found in my bloodstream.
In researching the condition, I realized this amount of blood loss puts him in the most severe category of this condition where risk of stillbirth and neonatal death is very high. But because we got him delivered when we did, he was able to get a blood transfusion that cured his anemia. He spent five days in the NICU, but then came home to us happy and healthy.
This app helped prevent me from losing my second child like I lost my first. Because I learned Jude’s patterns, I was able to recognize when something was off and advocate for immediate intervention. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” -Lauren W., Jude’s mom
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