After losing their first child at 38 weeks last February, a local couple, Julie Immelt and Ben Whelden, have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a Cuddle Cot at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
In a letter to the Times, Julie Immelt wrote:
We didn’t find out we were pregnant until [I was] 10 weeks along, and we were so excited. I started planning and reading everything I could … It was finally revealed that we were having a boy. We named him Mark Benjamin Immelt Whelden after my dad and Ben. We could not wait to meet our little guy.
Then the unthinkable happened. On Feb. 18th, we went in for our 38-week check up. It was routine, but I immediately thought something was off. Right away [the midwife] could not find his heartbeat. After several tries, she brought in the doctor. He looked and immediately said the words that ring in our heads daily.
“Here is the head, here is the vertebrae, here is the heart chamber, and there is no heartbeat.” We then were given the option to go in that night or wait till morning. We chose to wait, and they induced me at 8 am the next day. Roughly 17 hours later, the most beautiful little angel was born. We were able to spend some time with him. We dressed him in a special outfit, took pictures, and had him baptized.
But after about three hours we had to say goodbye because he was deteriorating. I guess we were lucky, because I’ve read stories about families having less time. This is why we believe a Cuddle Cot is important, so that families can spend as much time as they would like with their babies.
Cuddle cots cool [stillborn] babies’ body temperature and keep it constant so that rapid deterioration does not occur. I have read that one out of every 160 births is a baby born still, and there are 26,000 stillbirths a year in the U.S. Unfortunately, however, there are roughly only 24 cuddle cots in all of the United States.
We would like to make it a couple more by raising money to donate one to each of our local hospitals [Martha’s Vineyard and Falmouth], in honor of Mark Benjamin.
Please join Ben and me in order to help those families be able to spend more time with their little angels.
To read more about Cuddle Cots, and how they work, visit flexmort.com/cuddle-cots. To donate, go to de.gofund.me/rxy6hs.