I Lost My Son At 32 Weeks Pregnant. The Autopsy Said Carbon Monoxide Poisoning. My Detector Was Working Perfectly The Whole Time.

Hudson would be six weeks old today.

I am writing this from his nursery. The one I'm not allowed to take apart yet because my therapist says I'm not ready.

The crib Daniel built himself is still in the corner. The stuffed elephant I bought him before I even knew he was a boy is on the pillow. The Count the Kicks app on my phone still has his name in it.

I am 36 years old. My husband and I tried for him for four years. Two rounds of IVF. A chemical pregnancy at five weeks. A miscarriage at eleven weeks that I delivered into a toilet at three in the morning while Daniel was on a work trip in San Diego.

Then Hudson stuck.

I was a careful pregnancy. I was a planning pregnancy. I was the woman who read every book and listened to every podcast and bought the SNOO before the second trimester because I was 36 and I knew this might be my only chance.

I am writing this because I almost wasn't able to write anything at all for the longest time. And if I had read something like this twelve months ago, my son would still be alive.

I want every pregnant woman who reads this to read it twice.

The House We Fell In Love With

We bought our house the spring before I got pregnant.

It was built in 2019. Six years old when we moved in. The seller was the original owner. He had taken meticulous care of it. Everything was still under the builder's warranty.

We had it inspected anyway because that's what you do. Forty three pages. Zero issues. The inspector said it was the cleanest report he had written that year. The HVAC system was practically new. The water heater was practically new. The roof was practically new.

I want you to remember that.

I used to think carbon monoxide poisoning only happened in old houses with old furnaces and old detectors and people who hadn't gotten around to maintenance.

It does not.

It happened to me. In a six year old house. With a six year old furnace. With a green light glowing on the wall.

The Tuesday I Found Out

I found out I was pregnant in February.

I peed on the test at 5:47 in the morning on a Tuesday. Two lines. Faint but two.

I sat on the bathroom floor and stared at it for forty minutes because I was scared if I moved it would stop being real.

Eventually I made Daniel pancakes and slid the test across the kitchen counter while he was checking his phone.

He looked at it. He looked at me. He said are you serious. Then he said it again. Then he started crying in a way I had never seen him cry, and I started laughing because it was the most absurd and beautiful moment of my entire life.

We told our parents that weekend. His mom cried for an hour. My mom got on a plane the next day.

I was 5 weeks pregnant.

I had no idea what was already happening inside the furnace in the basement.

The Most Careful Pregnant Woman Alive

The first trimester I was the most careful pregnant woman in the history of pregnant women.

I bought a humidifier. I switched to low VOC paint for the nursery. I read every label on every cleaning product in my house and threw out the ones with anything I couldn't pronounce. I drank filtered water. I bought a non toxic crib mattress and Daniel installed outlet covers in every room before I was even showing.

I was 36. I was IVF. I was geriatric, which is the word my doctor used at my first appointment and the word I cried in the parking lot about for an hour after.

I was going to do this right.

At 12 weeks we got the NIPT back. The NIPT is the early blood test that screens for genetic conditions and tells you the sex of the baby. Boy.

I cried for an hour. Daniel cried for two. We named him that weekend.

Hudson. Hudson Daniel. After my father, who had died eight months before I got pregnant and never got to know I was even trying.

We started talking to him at 13 weeks. Daniel would put his face against my belly every night and say good night Hudson. Hudson, your dad loves you. Hudson, you have no idea what you're getting into.

I cried every single time.

The Day He Kicked Daniel's Hand

I felt him kick at 19 weeks.

It happened in a Target. I was looking at a swaddle on an end cap and I felt it and I gasped out loud and the woman next to me asked if I was okay and I said it's my baby. He just kicked. She squeezed my arm and said congratulations honey.

By 24 weeks Daniel could feel him from the outside.

By 28 weeks Hudson had a schedule. He kicked the most between 8 and 9 in the evening and again between 6 and 7 in the morning. I downloaded the Count the Kicks app and started timing him.

He was always under ten minutes to ten kicks. Sometimes he did ten in two minutes. He was a strong baby. The doctor said he was measuring big for his gestational age.

I bought a rocking chair off Facebook Marketplace from a woman whose own kids had grown up.

I refinished it myself with chalk paint. I sanded it on the back porch in my second trimester.

I put it in the corner of the nursery facing the crib. I would sit in it some nights with my hand on my belly and rock and just talk to him about nothing.

That chair is in front of me right now as I write this.

I haven't been able to throw it out.

The Headaches We Both Ignored

The furnace kicked on for the season the second week of October.

That weekend Daniel and I both got headaches. We laughed about it. We blamed dehydration. I had been crying a lot that week because the nursery was finally done and I was hormonal. He had been working long hours on a project that was launching the following month.

By the third week of October he started sleeping through his alarm.

This is a man who has never slept through an alarm in his life. He is a software engineer. He has multiple back up alarms.

He blamed work stress. He started going to bed at 10 instead of midnight. It kept happening. He started taking the pre workout he hadn't touched in a year just to wake up enough to drive to the office.

I was getting headaches every morning too. I called my OB. The nurse said it was probably late pregnancy fatigue. Drink water. Take a Tylenol if it gets bad. Lots of women feel awful in the third trimester.

So I took Tylenol. I drank water. I drank more water.

The dog stopped sleeping on Daniel's feet around the same time. He started sleeping in the basement next to the laundry room.

I told Daniel he was probably hot upstairs. The heat was on.

The dog had moved to the only room in the house that wasn't connected to the furnace ductwork.

I didn't know that at the time.

I know it now.

The Last Kick

On a Sunday at the end of October, I felt Hudson kick so hard my coffee cup vibrated on the table.

I screamed for Daniel. He came running. He put his hand on my belly and Hudson kicked his palm and Daniel looked up at me and his eyes filled with tears and he said our son is going to play soccer.

That was the last time I felt Hudson move.

That is the last memory I have of my son being alive.

Tuesday Morning At 7:14

Tuesday morning at 7:14 I woke up and put my hand on my belly and waited.

He always kicked between 6 and 7. I was off schedule already. I drank cold water. I lay on my left side on the couch. I pressed where his foot usually was.

Nothing.

I told myself he was sleeping. I told myself I had been overcaffeinated the day before. I texted my best friend and she said don't panic. I called my mom and she said it was probably fine.

At 10:30 I called the OB. The nurse said come in.

I drove myself because Daniel was already at the office and I told myself it would be fine.

That is the part I still can't get over.

I drove myself.

I drove twenty six minutes to the office with one hand on my belly and one on the steering wheel, talking to my son the entire way, telling him he just needed to wiggle a little for mommy. Just a little. Just give me one kick.

The ultrasound tech moved the wand for three minutes without saying a word.

Then she said let me get the doctor.

I sat in that room alone for six minutes. I know it was six minutes because I watched the clock on the wall and I counted every second.

My doctor came in. She didn't sit at the computer. She sat on the rolling stool next to my head. She put her hand on my shoulder.

She said Sarah. I'm so sorry. There is no heartbeat.

Five Hours

I called Daniel from the parking lot.

I could not say it. I just kept saying come to the hospital. Come now. Come now. Come now.

He kept asking what's wrong, and I finally said Hudson is gone and he made a sound on the phone that I cannot describe to another human being.

I delivered Hudson at 4:47 in the morning the next day.

He was 4 pounds 2 ounces. He was 16 and a half inches long. He had Daniel's nose. He had my hands. He had a full head of dark hair, which I had been telling my mom for months would happen because I had terrible heartburn the entire pregnancy.

I held him for five hours.

I sang him every song I had been planning to sing him for seven months. I sang him the lullaby my dad used to sing to me. I sang him a Lana Del Rey song. I sang him the alphabet.

Daniel sat next to me and put his hand on Hudson's tiny chest and didn't take it off for an hour.

When the nurse came in to ask if we were ready, we said yes because what else are you supposed to say.

They took footprints. They took a lock of his hair. They put him in a memory box.

We drove home from the hospital with the empty car seat in the back.

That drive is the worst forty three minutes of my entire life.

The Autopsy

The autopsy came back six weeks later.

Elevated fetal carboxyhemoglobin. Carbon monoxide poisoning.

I read the word carboxyhemoglobin seventeen times before I understood what it meant. It means carbon monoxide had bound to Hudson's blood. It means his blood had been slowly poisoned for weeks. It means he had been breathing my air and my air was killing him and I had no idea.

My carboxyhemoglobin was elevated too. Not enough to send me to the hospital. Not enough to trigger my detector. But elevated. Chronically elevated. The kind of elevation that happens from weeks of slow exposure.

My body had been processing it. His couldn't.

The Fire Department

The perinatologist called the fire department. Two men came to our house the next morning. One was in his thirties. 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. Including your nursery.

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 six 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 six years 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.

Daniel 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.

He paused.

The sensor inside dies in 5 to 7 years. The green light keeps glowing the whole time.

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 that still has Hudson's name on the door.

I'm Pregnant Again

I am 11 weeks pregnant right now.

We didn't talk about trying again for a long time. The nursery stayed exactly the way it was the night Hudson died for almost five months. The crib. The stuffed elephant. The chalk-painted rocking chair in the corner.

I went into that nursery once a week and sat in the rocking chair and cried and rocked and cried and rocked. Daniel wouldn't go in at all for the first two months.

In month five, on a Sunday afternoon, he carried the stuffed elephant into our bedroom and put it on my nightstand. He said I think Hudson would want him with you instead.

Then I peed on a stick at 6:14 in the morning. Two pink lines. I called Daniel at work. He said are you serious three times before he believed me.

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.

Protect Every Breath Your Baby Takes

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 five 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.

For Hudson.

— Sarah Mitchell

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