I Lost My Son At 32 Weeks. The CO Detector On Our Wall Was Working The Whole Time.

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.

I got pregnant on the second try.

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

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.

At 12 weeks we got the NIPT results back. It was a boy. I cried for three hours.

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.

Hudson Mitchell. We said it out loud about fifteen times that night. 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

The second trimester I started feeling him. It happened during a meeting at work — a little flutter, like a goldfish flipping inside me. I texted Mark immediately.

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 Hudson was lucky he got me as a mom.

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 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.

The Third Trimester

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.

The car seat went in the car at 30 weeks. 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

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 Things Started To Shift

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 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 noticed Hudson hadn't kicked since the weekend. I told myself he was just having a quiet day. On Tuesday I hadn't felt him at all. I called my OB. She said come in.

The Ultrasound

She moved the wand around for what felt like an hour.

The room was quiet in a way that rooms aren't supposed to be quiet. The technician had stopped talking. She was looking at the screen and not at me. I watched her face and I knew before she said anything.

She left to get the doctor.

The doctor came in. She was young. She looked at the screen. She looked at me. She said Mrs. Mitchell, I'm so sorry. There is no heartbeat.

I called Mark from the parking lot. I couldn't say it right. I kept saying the words in the wrong order. He was there in eleven minutes.

We sat in the car for a long time.

Hudson

They induced me that night. Hudson was born still at 32 weeks and 4 days. He weighed 4 pounds 1 ounce. He had Mark's nose. He had my ears. He had ten fingers and ten toes and a full head of dark hair.

He was perfect.

I held him for four hours. I memorized every part of him. I told him his name. I told him about the maple tree. I told him about the stuffed bunny. I told him his dad was going to teach him to throw a slider.

I told him I was sorry.

I told him I didn't know.

The Question I Couldn't Stop Asking

The days after Hudson were a blur. I remember the drive home with the empty car seat. I remember Mark carrying the hospital bag inside. I remember sitting in the nursery in the rocking chair for a long time.

But I kept asking the same question. Why. Why did this happen. I was healthy. My numbers were good. I hadn't done anything wrong. I had done everything right.

My OB said sometimes there is no answer. She said stillbirth is more common than people know. She said we could run tests. She said sometimes the tests come back normal and we never know.

I said I need to know.

The Perinatologist

Three weeks after Hudson, my OB referred me to a perinatologist. A specialist in high-risk pregnancies. She didn't sit behind her desk. She sat next to us on the couch in her office. She had a box of tissues already on the table.

She went through everything. My bloodwork. My prenatal visits. The placenta pathology. The cord. Everything came back normal.

Then she asked about our house.

She asked if we had a carbon monoxide detector. I said yes. She asked if it had gone off. I said no. She asked when we'd last replaced it. I said I didn't know. She asked if we had a gas furnace. I said yes.

She paused.

She said Mrs. Mitchell. I want to order a carbon monoxide test. I want to check your blood and Mark's blood. I want to know what your CO levels have been.

The Results

The results came back four days later.

My carboxyhemoglobin — the measure of carbon monoxide in my blood — was elevated. Not dramatically. Not at a level that would have sent me to the ER. But elevated. Chronically elevated. The kind of elevation that happens from weeks of low-level exposure, not from one acute event.

Mark's was elevated too.

The perinatologist called us in. She explained it carefully. She said carbon monoxide crosses the placenta. She said a mother's body can handle low-level CO that wouldn't even cause symptoms in an adult. But a fetus cannot. A fetus has fetal hemoglobin, which binds to CO far more readily than adult hemoglobin. And once CO binds to fetal hemoglobin, it stays bound much longer than in an adult.

She said Hudson didn't die suddenly. Hudson died slowly. Over weeks. While you were doing everything right.

The Fire Department Came The Next Morning

I asked the perinatologist 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.

The fire department came the next morning. 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 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 said: 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.

The Detector On Our Wall

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.

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.

The Federal Standard

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.

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.

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.

The Detector Captain Reyes Recommended

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.

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.

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.

I'm Pregnant Again

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.

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 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.

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.

The Number That Lives In My Head

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 fully safe again. I know that. But I know now what I didn't know before. I know what killed my son. And I know what would have saved him.

Please Hear Me

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.

Final Words

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. For Hudson.

🤍

— Sarah Mitchell

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