Alexa & Dominic

• Mom Saves

• 01.29.24

“My friend and co-worker Lillie had experienced a stillbirth a few years ago, and she was the one who told me about the Count the Kicks app. Once she told me about the app, I downloaded it, and as soon as I started to feel my baby kick more frequently, I started to track using the app.

By using the app I was able to get the gist of how often he was kicking, when he would start, when he would stop, and as soon as I hit 29 or 30 weeks, it was consistent.

When I was 37 weeks pregnant, I was up in the morning doing laundry and I felt really, really sick. I honestly just brushed it off, thinking it was because I was just super pregnant and uncomfortable. I thought I might be getting a cold. I went about my morning, but around 9:30 I started feeling really dizzy and light-headed, and I noticed he wasn’t moving like he normally did.

I would usually feel him flop around, like toss and turn, and it was pretty consistent around 9 a.m. So I decided to try to get him to move by going up and down the stairs a few times and jiggling my stomach. These things would usually quickly aggravate him. By this time it was 9:45 a.m. And though it doesn’t sound like it’s that late, I knew something wasn’t right when he had consistently been moving at 9 a.m. for weeks.

I was home alone, so I called my doctor and said “I don’t feel good, but the more concerning part is that I haven’t felt him move.” They told me to come in, and I was driving to the hospital because I had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. But on my way to the hospital my doctor called and said he wanted me to come to the office, so I listened. When I got to the doctor’s office I passed out.

The doctor decided to send me for a sonogram just to be safe. My husband had met me there, and the sonogram office was next door. When we got there I looked at my husband and told him I didn’t feel good, then passed out again. Because I passed out, the sonographer wouldn’t do the sonogram and sent me back to my doctor’s office. I had been there for 45 minutes at this point and just kept telling them “something’s not right.” 

The doctor decided to send me to the hospital to be safe, and when I got there they took me very seriously. They put me in a wheelchair the second I got there, and brought me right up to labor and delivery where they hooked me up to all the monitors.

Twenty minutes later his heart rate went down to 50. Then it was go time and they were running in and giving me a shot in the arm. They had me on all fours with the doctor behind me on the bed jiggling my stomach around. They weren’t really saying much, but they were all working really, really quick. They threw a gown at my husband, and told him to get dressed. My mom was also there, and they told her they were taking me in immediately. 

It was like a flash; there was no warning. As they were running me down the hall on the bed they were cutting my clothes off and taking my jewelry off. They did a C-section, and when they did the C-section, they found that I had a placenta abruption and four blood clots. 

They told me that if I had waited any longer, he wouldn’t have made it and most likely I wouldn’t have either because I was bleeding out and they didn’t know it. When they went in for the C-section, they found the four clots and said that they wouldn’t have been visible on the sonogram. They said a few hours would have made the difference.” -Alexa H., Dominic’s mom

Read Dominic’s Story