Foetal Movements... 2 questions (recording movements and lack thereof)

[oriordankt]

Dear all,

I keep on reading that I am meant to record feotal movements but no advice matches and my MW has said nothing. Has anyone worked out a way to record them? Some advice says record how many movements in an hour, others say to record "periods of movement" across 12 hours. I'm confused.

Plus, I'm 31 weeks and have some days when the little'un moves like crazy and other days when I feel hardly anything is that normal? I went into the hospital once when she stopped moving for a day and then as soons as the monitor was put on my belly she went crazy. The MW was lovely but I did feel like a prize wally so don't want to do it again. - I've taken to gently pressing on my belly every now and again to see if I can feel movement that way (probably not nest but it stops the worry)

Thanks in advance :)

Hi,
I also found this confusing at the beginning! I'm now 40 weeks + 3 days and about three weeks ago I noticed that I hadn't felt the baby move all day, and I normally feel him a lot. By the evening I had started to worry and so I followed the advice I had been given and lay on my left hand side to see what I could feel and nothing. In the end we went to the hospital to be checked. Luckily everything was OK and the monitoring was fine and so was the scan and of course the minute I was hooked up to the monitor he started moving around!!
But I spoke to the doctor who was great - he said the best thing to do if I got worried again was to go and lie on my left hand side somewhere quiet - not watching tv or trying to do other stuff at the same time so I could really focus on the movements. He said to count every little thing as a movement - not just the big kicks. You should feel at least 5 in half an hour. If not, go and eat or drink something sweet, have a quick walk and then lie back down and repeat the exercise. If after an hour you haven't felt enough then it's up to you whether you want to go and get it checked out or not. Probably if I had felt say 4 in half an hour I might leave it - but if you're worried it's always better to check than to leave it and be stressed and worried.

Good luck with everything!!

I've heard the average times you should feel your baby move is 5-10 times a day....I have never heard of recording it! But you should always go to your midwife if you haven't felt the baby for a long time no matter how silly you feel!

www.countthekicks.org.uk/

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/pregnancy/1194471-Reducing-Stillbirth-Count-the-Kicks-Campaign

Thank you for both links - very useful.

Just wanted to say I sympathise, it's easy to get stressed out about this. Something my midwife said that was helpful was that you feel more or less depending on what position the baby is in; if it kicks your bowel for example you will feel nothing! She said 10 kicks a day is fine which really helped me relax.