Fetal Kick Counts are a measure of how well your baby is doing. If you look this up on the internet you will find all kinds of crazy instructions on how this is to be done.We want you to start paying attention to your babies movements starting at about 28 weeks. Prior to this the movements can be unpredictable and the baby small enough to make them hard to do accurately. Generally, if you have noted fetal movement during the day and it seems as usual then all is likely to be well. If however, you haven’t noticed much movement or we’ve asked you to specifically monitor because of a problem, here is what to do.
1. Eat or drink something. Get some sugar and fuel flowing to the baby.
2. Lay on your side with your hand on your belly.
3. Count how many movements the baby makes. All the movements count separately.
4. If your baby moves at least 10 times within 2 hours, you are done, things appear to be well.
5. If your baby does not move at least 10 times within 2 hours, please give your provider a call. Most likely things are still fine but we want to check anyway.
Human gestational length has been set at 280 days or 40 weeks (kindly note that 9 months does not really play a role here). Note this is the time from the last menstrual period, not conception. So take that into account. Term pregnancy starts at 37 weeks and post-term pregnancy starts at 41-42 weeks. What has been observed is that as a pregnancy gets past the 41 week mark, some babies don’t do as well. For that reason, a general argument has been made by some that we should consider induction if we get too far past the due date. We tend to see older, not as functional placentas as time goes on. So your provider is likely to recommend induction between 41 and 42 weeks. Now, this is obviously a slightly arbitrary time frame. Obviously, some babies would do very well past this. But it seems to catch most problems without creating more problems by induction. If you get past the 41 week mark and we haven’t planned your induction until a little later, we will do some tests to make sure your baby is doing well. We will do an NST (non-stress test) where we place a monitor on your belly and observe the babies heart rate pattern over 20-40 minutes. From this we can reasonable assure fetal well being. We will also do an ultrasound to check how much fluid is around the baby (AFI-amniotic fluid index). These two tests give a very reasonable estimation of how well your baby is doing and so can continue stubbornly staying put. If these tests are not reassuring, we may need to consider moving forward with delivery.