When to start kick count
Fetal Kick Counting: Dr. Thomas Moore UC San Diego Health
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now fetal movement county has been used
for decades and recommended for decades
and there have been many different
methods that have been tried some of
them have been shown to you some kind of
moderate benefit most of the studies
have not shown a benefit of fetal
movement counting in a regular way we
did a study a few years ago where we
compared the still birth rate after we
instituted a program of fetal movement
counting that is based on the physiology
of the mother and fetus and when we
compared that to the still birth rate
that occurred for the year prior to the
institution of formal fetal movement
counting there was a mark reduction in
stillbirth since then in San Diego
County and at UC San Diego
we have been doing fetal movement
counting for the last several decades
and UCSD has one of the lowest still
birth rates in the state according to
the state data so we have reason to
believe that it's worth the trouble to
do the it's based on the physiology that
babies are awake at night and they sleep
during the day now new parents are very
well aware of this but in fact inside
the mother the baby is frequently not
moving during the day and it's not
helpful to really be counting baby
movements during the day whereas at
night babies are very busy and we can
get some kind of fetal movement counting
done pretty quickly at that time
unfortunately counting fetal movements
from 24 to 28 weeks doesn't go very well
because mothers don't feel a majority of
the fetal movements beyond 28 weeks
however the mothers feel over 80% of the
movements that can be detected on
ultrasound while watching the baby so
doing fetal movement counting from 28
weeks on until the baby is born is
something that has been shown
scientifically to reduce stillbirth and
which is we think very easy and quick to
do so you've reached 28 weeks and it's
the last third of the pregnancy and it's
time to talk about fetal movement county
why do we talk about it because of the
problem still birth
stillbirth occurs in one in 300
pregnancies and it's something that we
don't want and that we think we can
actually significantly reduce or even
eliminate the reason we recommend doing
fetal movement counting is the baby slow
down their movements if they start to
get become ill or get into risk so we
use a very simple system
it's a count to ten system we just want
to know how long it takes to feel ten
movements we recommend you do it in the
evening hours because that's when your
baby's awake
and so you can get your fetal movements
as quickly as possible we recommend you
wait until the baby wakes up before you
start counting because even in the
evening the baby sleeps a little bit and
wakes up and does stuff and goes back to
sleep so wait until the baby starts
moving and count to ten
this mother felt the baby move at ten
minutes to seven and said well I have
some time now I'm gonna pay attention
and she count to ten when she got to the
tenth movement she stopped and that
happened to take thirty-eight minutes
she wrote the time down on the card so
in 38 minutes is a good number but
actually the average number of minutes
to field ten movements is eleven and
that means half of women get there ten
movements in less than eleven maybe four
or five minutes
some nights 44 or even 55 minutes but
not allowed to go past an hour if it
goes over an hour you have to do one of
two things either wait till the baby
wakes up start counting again get a
number less than sixty you can put on
your card and you can fall asleep that
night knowing your baby's gonna be fine
the next day
if however it's late and we're worried
that we're gonna fall asleep and we
don't have a movement count for tonight
of less than 60 minutes then we always
go to the hospital tonight
that way we can reach out and find the
baby that needs us nine times out of ten
a baby that's brought to labor and
delivery because of an abnormal fetal
movement counting at night the baby is
fine but it's that one time out of ten
when the baby reaches out has a cord
problem has something we didn't ever
suspect could be a problem that we
reach out and help that baby so that we
have a mother and a baby and a family
together at the end of the pregnancy
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