After new NC mom lost her unborn son in a horrific crash, she got one precious day with him
As three different doctors swarmed her in the emergency room, 24-year-old Joanny Rodríguez was experiencing the most excruciating physical pain she’d ever felt in her life — her lip busted, her pinkie broken, her hip fractured and her pelvis shattered in a nightmarish car wreck on Interstate 77.
But much greater agony was yet to come.
“The one thing I kept saying is, ‘Please check on my baby,’” recalls Joanny (pronounced Joe-ANN-ee), as she lies in a bed in the same Charlotte hospital she’s been in since Dec. 28.
She was, on the night of the accident, 34 weeks pregnant. Just six weeks from the expected arrival of her first child. Already aware her and her fiancé Robert Bolick’s baby was a boy. Had his name picked out. Had the nursery set up. Had that very day finished packing both of their hospital bags.
Please check on my baby!, she begged. PLEASE check on my baby!
“I didn’t feel right,” she says. “And probably within being there for less than 10 minutes, I could feel them testing for a heartbeat. I was trying to listen, but it was so chaotic in there, I couldn’t really tell if they had found a heartbeat or not. I kept asking them. Then two or three doctors walked in — and that’s when they told me that my baby had no heartbeat.”
Joanny screamed. Suddenly, it felt like everything inside her was broken. “Isn’t there something you can do?” she wailed. “Can’t you take him out and restart his heart? Can’t he start breathing again?”
There was not, they could not, and he would not.
When a doctor took Mateo Alexander Bolick from Rodríguez’s stomach via emergency C-section soon after, he was 5 pounds and 12 ounces and looked, to his mother, physically perfect. But he was gone.
‘My whole life I’ve pictured being a mom’
Joanny was born in New York and moved with her parents and two brothers to Indian Trail when she was 8. Robert is Catawba Indian and was raised on the tribal land near Rock Hill, South Carolina.
They met two years ago and fell in love, with Joanny becoming a maternal figure to Robert’s daughter (now 12) and son (now 10). Robert proposed to Joanny while they were on a glamping trip in Asheville in June; then, in July, they found out they were expecting.
It was a dream come true for Joanny.
“My whole life I’ve pictured myself being a mom,” she says. “My mom and my dad, they were like, ‘You were born to do this.’ And I’m a nanny. (That’s) what I do for work. I love kids. I love what I do. So I was just excited to have my own, you know? To have that connection, and just have that child in my life.”
“We were both so excited,” Joanny continues. “My whole Amazon cart became things for the baby. ... All the pictures on social media (were of) my bump growing, taking pictures with Robert, him holding my belly. ... That’s all I talked about all the time. All Robert talked about.”
In fact, they were talking about the baby two Wednesdays ago shortly before 10:30 p.m., as they headed back to their Matthews home after visiting Robert’s family in South Carolina.
One second it was a totally normal, uneventful drive. The next, Joanny says, the Hyundai Tucson SUV Robert was driving slammed into a vehicle that had been parked in the middle of the interstate without any lights on.
The couple would soon learn that, upon impact, Joanny suffered a placental abruption that had cut Mateo off from his oxygen supply.
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Making the most of the time they had
The rest of that night was a brutal blur.
She could barely process what happened as she cried with Robert, who had managed to escape serious injury. Same, when she cried with her parents, who had arrived at the hospital thinking their daughter and son-in-law had simply been in a fender-bender. She had a second emergency surgery, to repair her hip.
It wasn’t until 7 o’clock the next morning that everything snapped into focus, when Mateo was quietly brought into her room so she could hold him.
He almost appeared to simply be sleeping. He didn’t look injured. It was a reminder of how close he’d been to coming into the world healthy. So, in some ways, seeing him was even more devastating than Joanny ever could have imagined.
Overwhelmingly, though, she wound up feeling “extremely blessed” that her family and Robert’s were able to spend time with Mateo.
“It’s very surreal having your baby in the room knowing that your baby is not ... here. That your baby’s not alive,” she says. “But it also brought me a sense of comfort having him close to me, if that makes sense. It’s kind of confusing and it’s kind of hard. But it was nice being able to hold him when I wanted to hold him. To be able to just cry with him in my arms.”
Her voice shakes as she continues.
“We had him for an entire day with us, and we made sure to take a lot of pictures,” Joanny says. “Even though they were heartbreaking and hard to take, we knew that this is what we were gonna be able to have of him.”
Without reservations, she posted several of those photos of Mateo on social media along with a message about what happened.
No, it wasn’t a traditional birth announcement, she explains. But “at the end of the day, he’s my son, and I want to be able to share him with the world. ... He was so beautiful. He was so perfect. ... I know it’s not an easy thing for other people to see. But I felt like I needed to share it no matter what, ’cause I also know that I’m not the only person that has gone through something like this. There’s so many other people who’ve had an infant loss, and pregnancy loss. ... stillbirth. Miscarriage. I was like, I want to share this for those people, too. To know that they’re not alone.
“And you know what? This is not something I’m gonna be able to survive by myself. I’m gonna need support from other people. So I knew I had to share it. And I don’t regret sharing it. I’m very glad I did.”
Where do they go from here?
After spending 10 days in the hospital, Joanny was able to go home on Saturday.
She’ll have to use a walker or a wheelchair (and won’t be able to drive) for the next three months due to her hip and pelvis injuries. As for her emotional recovery plan, it will involve — in addition to that support system — a lot of prayer and dependence on her faith.
“There’s moments where I break down, and there’s a lot of sadness,” she says. “But there’ve been moments where we’ve all been talking about his smile and about the way he looks, and how he would have been. And it brings us a lot of happiness.”
“Something that was told to me, by a hospital chaplain, is, ‘He did live. He lived those eight months in your stomach. And while for some people that’s not the traditional way of thinking how a baby lives, he was alive in there.’ That’s something I’ll always cherish and hold close to me.
“I’m not there yet,” she says, “but I know there will be a day where, when I think of Mateo, I only think of joy.”
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A GoFundMe has been set up to help Joanny Rodríguez and Robert Bolick here.
This story was originally published January 10, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "After new NC mom lost her unborn son in a horrific crash, she got one precious day with him."
