Kick Counts
Your baby’s movements are your best assessment of your baby’s health!
By the time you’ve been pregnant for 28-weeks your baby is a fully formed human! All the parts are there and working. This is a great time to get to know your baby’s habits. Babies have sleepy times, and wake times throughout the day. Knowing what is normal for your baby now will help you respond quickly in the rare event that something changes. This simple daily check-in can literally save a baby’s life.
Beginning at 28-weeks in your pregnancy, we would like you to begin doing a daily check-in called “Kick Counts”. It would be more accurate to call them “movement counts”. Ideally, you will take a little time every day to notice how long it takes your baby to move 10 x after a full meal. If you do that daily for a week or 2, you’ll quickly see what your baby’s pattern is. That’s going to be helpful info later in pregnancy.
You know that traditionally pregnant women are induced when they “go past their due date”. That’s because sometimes the baby’s placenta isn’t healthy enough to keep feeding the baby all the nutrition and oxygen you are handing off to the baby through the placenta. If the placenta is breaking down too early, the baby won’t get enough nutrition, so the baby will stop moving as much. The best way to know how your baby’s placenta is doing is to see how your baby responds to nutrition.
Here’s how to do “kick counts” / movement counts
After a big meal (usually dinner), you and your partner lay down together. Both put your hand on the belly.
Write down what time you laid down.
Make a hash mark each time you feel any movement — a kick, roll, or wave.
“My baby usually moves 10 times in 20-minutes after dinner”
Write down the time when you get the 10th movement.
Keep a record of it until you see your baby’s “average timeframe”. Once you know your baby’s average, you can check a little less often — maybe just once or twice a week.
If you ever have a day when you think the baby isn’t moving “normally” you can eat a normal meal, or drink a cold / sugary drink and do a movement check. If the baby moves normally, no worries. But if the baby isn’t moving normally, you will be advised to the hospital for a non-stress test and/or biophysical profile. If the baby really isn’t thriving, they can take immediate steps to bring your baby safely into the world.
