Carolina Moreno, 27, from Alberta, Canada, fell asleep in the hospital shortly after 4 in the morning. She was only four centimeters dilated, had an epidural in place, and had already endured hours of contractions, so she figured labor was still a long way off.
Three hours later, a nurse entered her room because the fetal monitor had stopped detecting the baby’s heartbeat…
When she asked Moreno to change positions, the nurse lifted the sheets and found the newborn face down, silent, between his mother’s legs: He had not cried.
Carolina, who was awake at that moment, thought her son had died. The nurse acted immediately and made him cry within seconds. It is estimated that the baby was alone in the bed for between six and seven minutes.
Both were declared completely healthy. But Moreno describes the birth of her third child as one of the most traumatic moments of her life: she was unable to experience it consciously, and the anguish of believing she had lost him completely overshadowed the moment when they told her the baby’s sex, which they had kept as a surprise for nine months.
