So, your are pregnant ~ or not ~ and you have heard about stillbirths but you have also heard the possibility of you or anyone you know actually delivering a baby born still is one in a million or extremely unlikely - RIGHT??? Well, the correct answer to the above statement is actually - WRONG.
A stillbirth occurs once in every 200 births in the USA. There are 30,000 every year in our country according to Dr. Jason Collins, MD of The Pregnancy Institute in New Roads, LA. This equates to about 85 each and very day in our highly medically and technically advanced hospitals and country. Maybe you have seen articles, posts or blogs on stillbirth and quickly flipped the page, clicked to the next entry or exited the post. Maybe you read the information in front of you thinking, "This will never happen to me" and you let the information leave your mind as fast as you let it enter. Well, the time has come for us all ~ parents to be, family & friends, as well as, the medical community - to embrace the information in front of us and demand the resources to extinguish the flame of stillbirth.
According to The Lancet's series, STILLBIRTHS, at least 50% of our worlds almost 3 million stillbirths are completely preventable. The statistics used in The Lancet consider a stillborn baby, "the death of a baby at 28 weeks’ gestation or more." What does that mean to us? It means simple interventions may save the life of a precious baby ~ if you are told what to do and what to look out for. At The Star Legacy Foundation we call it empowering and educating parents to be and their health care team.
Dr. Ruth Fretts, OB-GYN and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, believes the risk of stillbirth increases late in pregnancy and many could be prevented.
"We don't do a very good service to women by not informing them of the risks and giving them options to be evaluating the baby's well being".
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist in the United Kingdom, whose stillbirth rates are one of the most dire for a country which is not considered to be one of the 98% low or middle income countries with abysmally high stillbirth rates, just issued a statement on reduced feta movement, "Clinicians should be aware (and should advise women) that although fetal movements tend to plateau at 32 weeks of gestation, there is no reduction in the frequency of fetal movements in the late third trimester."
DR. Craig Rubens, MD PhD,Co-Founder & Executive Director GAPP states, "Why focus on the last 1/2% of pregnancy during Labor and Deliver to understand why women have adverse outcomes during pregnancy. We need to focus on and study more the 99.5% of pregnancy that's going on currently." Dr. Rubens tells us there are 13 million preterm births and this is the #1 cause of infant mortality.
So, what can we do? Although the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists support kick counting ~ it is rarely mentioned or explained to pregnant women. All mothers - to -be need to be aware of the importance of baby's movements from 20 weeks onwards and the importance of daily kick counting from 28 weeks onwards. Make it your personal mantra to tell all women about this whether they are pregnant or not! Visit See Me, Feel Me now and learn how to teach yourself or your friend how to become baby's "in utero" advocate.
Don't wait until the tragedy of stillbirth strikes ~ and you think to yourself, "Oh yeah, I heard something about somewhere but I didn't think it would ever happen to anyone I know."
Now you have been told. Now you have the tools. Now you need to spread the word and empower moms across the globe ~ remember ~ a sweet little baby's life could be depending on you...
No comments:
Post a Comment