Husband mourning mother-to-be who collapsed at Sox game

The husband of a pregnant woman who died after collapsing at a Red Sox game Saturday does not know why his wife died, but Todd Quickenton is relieved his newborn son is doing well.

``I've just got to try to stay strong for Maxwell's sake," he said yesterday in a telephone interview from his home in Schenectady, N.Y., where he is awaiting autopsy results. ``We're going to help each other. I look at him, and it doesn't hurt so bad."

Denise Quickenton, 29, went into apparent cardiac arrest at a Fenway concourse picnic area after the couple moved there from sunny bleacher seats. Temperatures reached 90 degrees that afternoon. She was seven months pregnant and had a history of asthma, but her husband said she seemed fine that day.

``Heat very well may have played into it," Quickenton said. ``I looked in the opposite direction, and when I turned back she was pale and clammy and not breathing and starting to slink out of her seat."

Staff from a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center station at the park arrived quickly but could not revive his wife, Quickenton said. She was taken to the hospital shortly after 3 p.m., where the 4-pound infant was saved.

After Maxwell was taken off a ventilator Monday, his father returned to New York to make arrangements for Denise Quickenton's funeral, which is planned for tomorrow at United Church in Stillwater , the town where she grew up. Hospital staff told the father his son would be healthy enough to be released by the end of this week.

Denise Quickenton, an advertising executive at Mehigan, Robert & Bellone in Schenectady, had picked out the name for her son and designed a nursery for the couple's first child, her mother, Mary Roberge, said yesterday in a phone interview from her home in Stillwater, N.Y.

``His bedroom is painted with Winnie the Pooh pictures and little Red Sox ballplayers," she said.

Denise Quickenton became a huge Red Sox fan after meeting her husband in 2002. Todd Quickenton, an Albany, N.Y., native who was fond of the Red Sox, was shocked to find a Yankees cap in Denise's apartment early in their courtship, but said she quickly warmed to his team.

The Red Sox are considering contributing to a trust fund created for the newborn at TrustCo Bank in Schenectady, Red Sox spokesman John Blake said yesterday. The team is posting heat precautions on the scoreboard during this week's heat wave , he said.