HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Each day in the U.S., about 60 families learn that their baby no longer has a heartbeat.
Friday, September 19, is National Stillbirth Prevention & Awareness Day, a day set aside to honor the tens of thousands of American families who lose a baby to stillbirth every year.
Stillbirth prevention & awareness is the mission of Healthy Birth Day, a nonprofit, formed by five women joined together by stillbirth.
“Our goal is to make fetal movement monitoring, kick counting, a common practice for all expectant moms,” Kimberly Isburg, the Director of Communications for Healthy Birth Day, said.
She said that while stillbirth unfortunately impacts thousands of families each year, research shows that prevention methods can save lives.
“One in four still births are preventable when moms are educated about paying attention to their baby’s movement patterns in the third trimester of pregnancy,” Isburg said.
In 2008, the nonprofit launched Count the Kicks. It’s an initiative aimed at having moms in their third trimester time how long it takes their baby to kick 10 times. They recommend that moms sit down and count around the same time every day, when their baby is active.
“Time how long it takes the baby to reach ten movements, and then also ask them to rate the strength of their baby’s movements,” Isburg said. “Because research has also shown that the strength of the baby’s movements are important.”
Isburg said that by doing this, moms can get a baseline for what is normal for their baby.
“If anything ever changes, they notice it’s taking longer than usual to get ten movements, or their baby’s movements aren’t as strong as usual, that’s a time when they need to speak up, call their doctor, go into the hospital and get checked,” she said.
Count the Kicks also has a free app that’s available in more than 20 languages. It’s available across all platforms. Since the program was launched, it’s expanded to 30 states, including Alabama.
“The providers that we hear from, the hospitals that use our program, they always say that they would rather check a mom and a baby to make sure that everything is okay, then to find that maybe something was not the way it should be and maybe it’s too late,” Isburg said.
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