Kristin Revere and Kimberly Isburg discuss the myth about baby’s movement in pregnancy and her personal connection with Count the Kicks in the latest episode of Ask the Doulas.
Hello! This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am so excited to chat with Kimberly Isburg. Kimberly is the community manager for Healthy Birth Day, Incorporated, which is also the creator the Count the Kicks Stillbirth Prevention program. So excited to have you here!
Hi, Kristin! Thank you so much for having me! I’m really excited to be here.
So you have a personal story, which I love, Kimberly, about your own pregnancy journeys and how you came to know Count the Kicks.
Yes! I am a mom of two boys, and I am here in the state of Iowa, which is where Count the Kicks began. I was certainly familiar with Count the Kicks from my own pregnancies, and used the Count the Kicks method to count kicks with both of my boys. I never had any problems. I never really noticed any changes that caused me to need to speak up. But I loved having that tool and resource and loved getting to know how they were both unique in their movements and in their personalities, and I would say how they were in the womb kind of follows how they are in life. One is just a little bit more laidback and chill, and one is very much a mover and a shaker and a go-getter.
I found that with my own kids. My first was always moving and very early on, and my son was more chill. He was also a bigger baby, so I don’t know if he just had less room. Who knows, but he is a little bit more laid back than his sister.
Yes. One of my favorite memories of my own kids during pregnancy – I was holding my oldest, kind of on my belly, pregnant with my second, and I distinctly remember one of the very first big kicks I felt was my youngest kicking the top side of my belly where my oldest was kind of resting on my belly.
I love that! So for our listeners who are not yet familiar with Count the Kicks, can you give us some of the origin story on why Healthy Birth Day felt it was important to create this awareness program? Of all the different ways you can focus on advocacy, I find this to be obviously so important, even more so now with the maternal rates that we have.
Like I said, Count the Kicks was founded here in the state of Iowa. We were founded by five women here in central Iowa who all lost daughters to stillbirth or infant death in the early 2000s. And they were kind of told that stillbirth is rare, that it doesn’t happen a lot, but it happened to all of them within a fairly short amount of time, and they were all kind of connected to each other by friends and by their faith communities. They kind of connected with each other in their grief to support each other, and eventually, their conversations turned to, why is this happening? It isn’t rare. It happened to all of us, and it’s happening more than anyone realizes.
Stillbirth, if you don’t know, is the loss of a baby during pregnancy at 20 or greater weeks gestation. What our founders found was that it was happening to around 20-plus thousand families every single year in the US. That’s about one in every 177 pregnancies. They really turned their grief into fuel, and they said, we don’t want this to happen to any other families. We don’t want anyone else to join this club that we’re in where we’ve lost a baby. So they created the state’s firth stillbirth registry, just to gather additional data and information about the impact of stillbirth in the state of Iowa. Then they learned about some research out of Norway that showed a 30% reduction in stillbirth when moms are educated on getting to know their baby’s normal movement patterns in the third trimester of pregnancy. That reduces stillbirth rate by about 30%. They said if they can do that in Norway, we can do it here in Iowa. That’s how Count the Kicks was created. It’s a mom-focused educational empowering program that teaches expectant parents how to monitor their baby’s movements in the third trimester of pregnancy and helps them speak up and empowers them if they notice a chance.
Well, moms get things done, so it makes sense that they banded together! I love your personal story to be able to – you know, as communication manager, share the message that impacted all of you so personally.
Yes, absolutely. Really incredible that they just wanted to do something to help other families, and they knew that they could make an impact. They started out hoping to save just one baby, and about 15 years later, we’ve heard from more than 140 different families in 36 states and 6 countries who reached out to say, hey, Count the Kicks helped my baby get here safely.
I love it so much. And as far as your personal use of Count the Kicks, was it based on awareness, being located in Iowa and just knowing about the importance of it, or was it something your provider or a other support person told you about? Was there a risk factor that made you want to monitor kicks?
It was definitely just the awareness here of Count the Kicks in Iowa. We have these bright yellow educational materials with a pregnant mom on the front, and those were at my doctor’s office, at my provider’s office. I saw them at every appointment, and they would talk to me and ask, how is your baby moving? How are your kicks feeling? Things like that. It’s definitely something that’s kind of in most providers’ offices here, all of the materials, and that helps just to understand why it’s important and the benefits of kick counting.
And for our listeners in Michigan, there has been quite a bit of advocacy related to Count the Kicks and stillbirth prevention. You even have a director in Michigan, so that’s awesome!
We do! We launched our program there in the state of Michigan earlier this year through a partnership with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. We’re really excited and grateful to partner with them and have the opportunity to get that bright yellow Count the Kicks education into doctors’ offices and midwives and doulas there in the state of Michigan, as well.
That is amazing. And as you mentioned, it is for everyone. You were healthy. You weren’t high risk. It’s not like you were getting consistent nonstress tests in your provider’s office. So for people who aren’t high risk, this is just as beneficial because things can happen in pregnancy quickly, and I’ve supported stillbirths, unfortunately, as a doula. It doesn’t always give a lot of signs at those regular appointments.
Yes. The research really shows that a change in a baby’s movements can be the first or only sign that there may be an issue with the pregnancy, that your baby may be in distress. That’s why kick counting is so important for all pregnancies, not just high risk, not just multiples. It’s important for everyone because really, getting to know that baby’s normal movement pattern kind of gives you that information, that education, to be able to speak up if your baby’s normal ever changes. And again, every baby and every pregnancy is different, like we talked about. Every baby is going to move a little bit differently, and so Count the Kicks really makes it easy for you to get to know what’s normal for that baby and that pregnancy.
And whether it’s a handout or utilizing the app, again, all of that information is provided, but I would love to have you give us a rundown of how you count kicks, what would be considered movement that would count, and what would not count.
Yeah. So Count the Kicks, counting kicks, is really recommended to start at the third trimester of pregnancy, which is 28 weeks, or 26 weeks if you are high risk or pregnant with multiples. That is because that’s kind of the time in pregnancy when most babies get into more of a recognizable pattern of movement. So you’re going to want to count every day, once a day, around the same time, and try to pick a time that your baby is active. So again, around that third trimester, just pay attention to those movements, what times of day are you feeling baby move. Is it in the morning after you eat breakfast? Is it in the evening when you finally sit down and relax on the couch or lay down in bed? Count around that time. And we do have a free app that’s available in the app store, and it’s available in 20 different languages. That makes it really easy to do your daily kick count. When you use the app, you’re going to open it up and click on Start Counting. Then there’s a teal footprint on the screen, and you’re going to tap it every time you feel your baby move. It’s going to start a timer. The types of movements you’re looking for are kicks, pokes, jabs, rolls, swishes. Any type of intentional movement. The only thing that doesn’t count are hiccups because hiccups are involuntary. If you think about when you get hiccups yourself as an adult, you don’t really have much control over it. You can’t really make them go away. They kind of just are. And they’re going to feel very rhythmic and kind of have that pattern, but those intentional movements are what you count. You count until you get to ten movements, and the timer will stop on the app. Then it’s going to ask you to rate the strength of your baby’s movements, as well. Research also shows that the strength of movements is an important sign of your baby’s well-being. So a 1 on strength is going to be those light fluttery movements, kind of what you might feel early on when you first start to notice your baby moving in pregnancy. 5 is going to be those really big, fierce movements. Kicks, jabs, things that you might even be able to see on the outside of your belly. So you rate them 1 to 5 on the strength of movements. It gives you the ability to take any notes that you might want to take, whether that’s what you ate for lunch that day or a question you want to ask your provider. You can take those notes and then finish your session. And then after you do this for a few days, a week or so, you’re going to begin to see kind of a pattern or an average amount of time that it normally takes your baby to get to ten movements.
So helpful! And how can this information be helpful for anyone who works with expecting families, like a birth doula, for example, or a childbirth educator, even?
Yes! Again, we all have so many questions in pregnancy. There’s just a lot of things that are happening. And I think movements are one of those things that parents have a lot of questions about. So we absolutely love it when doulas and childbirth educators share Count the Kicks with the clients that they are working with and teach them about how to use it and show them the app and our materials. Anything you can do to educate them on the importance of kick counting. It’s also a great way to encourage your clients to bond with their baby. Most of our app users, about 77%, actually report that it helped to reduce their anxiety about the well-being of their baby. So these are all great benefits that doulas and childbirth educators can share with expectant parents. And again, as a doula or a childbirth educator, anyone working with expectant parents, you play an important role in helping to empower them and support them throughout their pregnancy journey. So if they ever reach out to you and say, my baby is just not moving today or something feels off. I just don’t feel like things are going like they normally do. You can play an important role in encouraging them to speak up, to call their provider, to go into the hospital and get checked and make sure that baby is okay. Most of the time, baby is just fine. There’s nothing going on. They’re just having an off day. But you would always rather go in and get checked and make sure that everything is okay.
100%. Fully agree. And so as far as other advocacy that Healthy Birth Day is involved with, I would love to hear more about your actions, not only in Iowa, but federally.
Yes! Count the Kicks is a program of Healthy Birth Day, Inc., which is the nonprofit organization. And really, our goal as Healthy Birth Day is to improve birth outcomes nationwide through stillbirth prevention initiatives. Really, taking a look just at the issue and impact of stillbirth in the US and what can be done nationwide to help improve birth outcomes. This year, our nonprofit played a vital role in advocating for a bill in congress called the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act. That was passed by the senate and by the house and then signed by President Biden in July of this year. It is huge. It’s incredible.
What this bill does is, in Title V, there is language about maternal and child health issues that states should address and focus on prevention efforts. Things like SIDS, things like smoking cessation during pregnancy, maternal mortality and morbidity. Lots of important things. But one thing that was never included in Title V in the language was stillbirth or stillbirth prevention.
Right. It was more on the maternal health, you’re correct.
Yeah. Stillbirth was left out, probably because at the time they didn’t think stillbirth was something that could be prevented. But we know now that it can, and the research shows that at least one in four stillbirths can be prevented through increased education about kick counting in pregnancy and other initiatives. So now Title V includes the words stillbirth and stillbirth prevention, and it’s really a signal to states and to state health departments that they can and they should invest those Title V grant dollars to focus on stillbirth prevention.
That’s so excellent. How can partners play an active role in stillbirth prevention?
There is so much awareness that needs to be raised about stillbirth. It’s an issue that we just don’t talk a lot about, yet it’s happening more often than most of us realize. Partners can help to get information out there. OF course, we’re also a nonprofit organization, and so we’re always looking for additional funding partners who want to invest in our program and in our work and who really believe in the cause of stillbirth prevention and what can be done to prevent it. So that’s another way that people can get involved and really help increase awareness about stillbirth and help with kick counting. That’s our ultimate goal, to help make kick counting a common practice for all expectant parents in the third trimester of pregnancy.
I love it so much. Very important work. So any final tips for our listeners?
I think just that we hear a lot of myths about movement in pregnancy and so I just would love to talk about a few of those. Like I mentioned, we sometimes hear that kick counting might increase anxiety and that’s a reason that people don’t want to talk to pregnant women about it, but our app users actually report that it helps to decrease their anxiety about the well-being of their baby. It’s also a great opportunity to bond with your baby, to involve your partner or your baby’s older siblings. Kick counting with Count the Kicks is really easy. Anybody can do it. It’s a great way for your whole family to bond.
We also hear that babies run out of room at the end of pregnancy. That is not true. Babies do not run out of room. They should not stop moving. The types of movements that you might feel may change. More jabs, fewer big rolls. But your baby should continue moving up to and during labor and kind of in the same pattern until they arrive.
Excellent information! So you’ve got two websites. Would you share those with our listeners?
Sure. Our nonprofit organization is Healthy Birth Day. And that’s really focused on stillbirth, the impact of stillbirth in the US. You can learn more about our advocacy efforts and the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act. And then Count the Kicks is the place to go for all things kick counting in pregnancy and education about how to use Count the Kicks, as well as a place to order our education materials. Those are free in the state of Michigan and also in about 30 other states in the US.
Amazing! And hopefully soon it will be all 50!
Yes, that is our goal. We want to get Count the Kicks into all 50 states and see the same success across the US as we’ve seen in Iowa, which we believe would save about 6,000 babies every single year.
That’s a huge difference. You are also very active on social media?
Yes. Healthy Birth Day and Count the Kicks are both on Facebook, Instagram, and X. We have Count the Kicks on TikTok. Healthy Birth Day is on LinkedIn if you want to connect with us there. Then we do have a YouTube channel for both Count the Kicks and Healthy Birth Day.
Amazing. Thank you so much, Kimberly, and again, I appreciate the work you’re doing so much.
Thank you so much, Kristin. We’re so grateful for the opportunity to share more about Count the Kicks.
It is definitely needed, and I’m excited to have your presence in Michigan.
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