My name is Stephanie. On October 16, 2025 I woke up in a panic that something was wrong. I was 28 weeks pregnant with our first child. There was decreased fetal movement. I felt the baby moving, but my baby had been so strong that I would see my belly popping up and down, now the movements felt less and weak, and my belly wasn't moving. I work in a High Risk Peri-Natal unit, I do the sonograms on all high risk pregnancy's. It was the weekend, so my husband and I went to the hospital. I have a key, I let myself into the unit, and my husband watched as I scanned our baby for 45 minutes. We saw subtle movements. But I didn't feel any of them. I then paged my doctor and told him I was in the hospital. He told me come up to L&D. I was put on the monitor. They told me everything was fine go home and come back if you still have decreased movement. Now it was 2 hours since I last felt the baby move.

We went home and after an hour we went back. They put me back on the monitor for the night. I started to have contractions every 3 minutes, tributiline wouldn't stop them. I had nurses tell me it was because I was stressed. They did sonograms every 3 hours and realized it wasn't in my head, the baby was hardly moving. By morning my doctor came in, he started to tell me it looked like Pre-Term Labor, they wanted to figure out what was happening, they gave me a shot of steroids just in case I had the baby early. As he started to explain the steroids to me I heard the baby's heart beat start to slow down, I thought "No, it must have just rolled over, they'll find it again." With that the doctor took my wrist and said "That heart rate we hear is Stephanie's pulse, break open a room!" My husband said "I have to go with her" they told him no. The OR was a horror show. I stood up on the stretcher and started screaming "I feel the baby!! I'm wrong! This is a mistake !" They got me down and they worked so fast I felt them cut into me and I screamed "I'm not asleep!" Then the next thing I knew I woke up in the recovery room with one of the high risk doctors that I work with. She was crying. I asked is the baby alive? She said yes. I said "He is very sick." And she said yes. We went over the possibilities of what it could be. I said it couldn't be Listeria, You see I knew all about Listeria, I knew what to stay away from, which I had.

There was no happy of shouting "It's a boy" in my case. Like I said my first words were is my baby alive. I had a baby boy, his name was Michael. He scored a 2 on his APGAR. I couldn't believe it was me who helps these poor patients all day long. How could I be on the other side of things. I didn't need a lesson on empathy, or sympathy. I know how precious a healthy baby is. I saw Michael he had his father's dimple in his chin and his curly brown hair, he had my eyes and my nose. I couldn't believe I was in the NICU seeing MY baby in one of the islets where I have scanned hundreds of babies myself. It wasn't until I kissed my son that I knew what it was all about. The love for a child. It was like a first longed for kiss from a boy when you were a teenager. Fireworks and knees buckling.

Over the 3 days of his life his brain bleed turned from a Grade I to a Grade IV. Which is the worse he was brain dead by the third day.

The infectious disease doctor told me it was listeria. How could this be? He asked "Did you eat lettuce?" Lettuce!! I didn't know about lettuce. About 2-3 times a week we would get take out at work. I always had a salad. I had no idea you could get Listeria from lettuce. They said I came very close to losing my uterus, and of course my life. I had no symptoms. I threw up every day since 7 weeks. So maybe I had but it blended into my morning sickness.

All of our hopes, and dreams were shattered. Everything was taken away. I tried to do everything right. I didn't have an amniocentesis. I was willing to have a baby with a genetic disease or something. But not this not something that could have been prevented. I read somewhere that when Listeria is on Iceberg lettuce it could be washed off with water. When Romaine lettuce is infected it takes chlorine to wash it off. Every salad I ate was Romaine. I figured there are more nutrients in it so that was my choice. I am so sad and so heart broken. Nothing can compare to this pain. I wish for no one to ever have to suffer through this. No one should.

My Baby Michael was born October 17, 2025 and died October 19, 2004- This all took place in the hospital where I have to return to go to work. It is so sad on one hand but on the other it is the only home my Michael ever had.

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