Meet Mateo
- Baby Saves
“I learned about Count the Kicks on Instagram. I had experienced a previous loss, so I had prenatal anxiety during this pregnancy. But found that I loved connecting with my rainbow baby during my daily kick counts.
Count the Kicks helped me learn and recognize my baby’s movement patterns, particularly that he loved using me as a trampoline in the early afternoon. I felt confident that he was doing OK knowing that that was his movement time and it really helped my anxiety.
On Wednesday, Aug. 14, I woke up from a nap realizing I hadn’t felt kicks all day and I knew something was off. I called my OB-GYN and left a voicemail for the nurse on call. Before they called me back, I followed my gut and went to Northside Hospital in Atlanta.
Everything looked good with vitals and blood pressure, but they still decided to hook me up to the monitors to see what was going on. Once I was hooked up, they realized my baby was having heart decelerations, all the way down into the 50s and 60s. These can be normal in active labor, but I was only 34 weeks and not in labor, so I was admitted for further monitoring and kept the monitors on overnight as a precaution. He continued to have prolonged heart decelerations all night and the next day.
At 5 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 16, we were awoken by nurses running into the room. My son’s heart rate had fallen dangerously low and wasn’t coming back up. Seconds later, they were running — pushing my hospital bed down the halls in a frenzy to get me to an OR for an emergency cesarean section.
My son, Mateo, was born at 34 weeks gestation, wrapped up in his umbilical cord. There were no heart defects. They believe he got too tangled in his cord, causing the heart decelerations and decreased movements. He was admitted to the NICU and after 17 days, our rainbow baby was finally able to come home with us.
My advice for moms is to trust your gut. You know your body and your baby. If you feel there is something wrong, it is better to be seen for nothing than to not say anything and have to deal with the grief that comes with loss. Count the Kicks empowered me to act quickly when I realized I hadn’t felt him move in his normal patterns.” -Monica B., Mateo’s mom
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