Meet Lila

• Baby Saves

• 02.15.24

“I learned about the Count the Kicks app on TikTok and I liked how it was easy to keep up with the kicks by just pressing a button on the app. I did kick counts every single day in the morning and evening because I wanted to check in on my baby. I had a perfectly healthy pregnancy and then my daughter stopped moving around suddenly. I noticed because she was always super active. 

On Christmas Eve morning at 37 weeks I went to the hospital because I knew in my gut something was not right. She always met kick counts within several minutes and hours had passed since her last movement. I had many things to do that day and could have easily just pushed it into the back of my head and wrote it off as anxiety. 

I ended up doing a non-stress test (NST) that she failed. She would not move and could not be roused with juice or repositioning. I was told she had nonreassuring fetal heart tones and I was having a baby that day. 

There was an attempted induction that failed. She continued having late heart rate decelerations and I was not progressing because we couldn’t increase Pitocin levels due to her heart rate. We agreed that we needed to do a cesarean section before things got worse. 

I had my beautiful baby that evening and she is perfectly healthy today. My providers believe her distress was due to reduced blood flow from sudden gestational hypertension. I was fine at my prenatal appointment just three days prior. My blood pressure skyrocketed after that and I had no symptoms of it. 

Please do not ignore reduced fetal movements! My daughter may have been a stillborn if I did not act on my instincts and knowledge provided by kick counting. Counting her kicks saved her life.” -Jessica C., Lila’s mom