Fetal Movements: Feeling Your Baby Move

(provided by babycenter.com)

When should I start to feel my baby move?
You probably won't feel your baby kick until sometime between 16 and 22 weeks, even though he started moving at 7 or 8 weeks and you may have already witnessed his acrobatics if you've had an ultrasound.

Veteran moms tend to notice those first subtle kicks — also known as "quickening" — earlier than first-time moms. (A woman who's been pregnant before can more easily distinguish her baby's kick from other belly rumblings, such as gas.)

Your build may also have something to do with when you'll be able to tell a left jab from a hunger pang. Thinner women tend to feel movement earlier and more often than women who carry more weight.

What does it feel like?
Women have described the sensation as being like popcorn popping, a goldfish swimming around, or butterflies fluttering. You'll probably chalk up those first gentle taps or swishes in your belly to gas or hunger pains, but once you start feeling them more regularly, you'll recognize the difference. You're more likely to feel these early movements when you're sitting or lying quietly.

How often should I feel movements?
At first the kicks you notice will be few and far between. In fact, you may feel several movements one day and then none the next. Although your baby is moving and kicking regularly, many of his jerks and jolts aren't yet strong enough for you to feel. But later in the second trimester, those reassuring kicks will become stronger and more regular.

If you're tempted to compare notes with other pregnant women, don't worry if your experience differs from that of your friends. Every baby has his own pattern of activity, and there's no correct one. As long as your baby's usual activity level doesn't change too much, chances are he's doing just fine.

Do I need to keep track of the kicking?
Once you're feeling kicks regularly, pay attention to them and let your practitioner know right away if you notice a decrease in your baby's movement. Less movement may signal a problem, and you'll need a nonstress test or biophysical profile to check on your baby's condition.

Once you're in your third trimester, some practitioners will recommend that you spend some time each day counting your baby's kicks. There are lots of different ways to do these "kick counts," so ask for specific instructions.

Here's one common approach: Choose a time of day when your baby tends to be active. (Ideally, you'll want to do the counts at roughly the same time each day.) Sit quietly or lie on your side so you won't get distracted. Time how long it takes for you to feel ten distinct movements — kicks, twitches, and whole body movements all count. If you don't feel ten movements in two hours, stop counting and call your midwife or doctor.

Vitamin D Deficiency Associated With Greater Rates Of Cesarean Section

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) found that pregnant women who are vitamin D deficient are also at an increased risk for delivering a baby by caesarean section as compared to pregnant women who are not vitamin D deficient. These findings currently appear on-line in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

At the turn of the 20th century, women commonly died in childbirth due to "rachitic pelvis" rickets of the pelvis. While rickets virtually disappeared with the discovery of vitamin D, recent reports suggest that vitamin D deficiency is widespread in industrialized nations.

Over a two-year period, the researchers analyzed the relationship between maternal serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and the prevalence of primary caesarean section. In total, 253 women were enrolled in this study, of whom 43 (17 percent) had a caesarean section. The researchers found that 28 percent of women with serum 25(OH)D less than 37.5 nmol/L had a caesarean section, compared to only 14 percent of women with 25(OH)D greater than 37.5 nmol/L.

"In our analysis, pregnant women who were vitamin D deficient at the time of delivery had almost four times the odds of caesarean birth than women who were not deficient," said senior author Michael Holick, MD, PhD, director of the General Clinical Research Center and professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at BUSM and Anne Merewood assistant professor of pediatrics at BUSM and lead author of the study.

According to Holick, one explanation for the findings is that vitamin D deficiency has been associated with proximal muscle weakness as well as suboptimal muscle performance and strength.

Notes:

This study was funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Maternal Child Health: R40MC03620-02-00, and by the US Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, Award.

Source:
Allison Rubin
Boston University

Caffeine During Pregnancy (You have never heard this before! Must Read!)

A new study published online in The FASEB Journal shows that the equivalent of one dose of caffeine (just two cups of coffee) ingested during pregnancy may be enough to affect fetal heart development and then reduce heart function over the entire lifespan of the child. In addition, the researchers also found that this relatively minimal amount of exposure may lead to higher body fat among males, when compared to those who were not exposed to caffeine. Although the study was in mice, the biological cause and effect described in the research paper is plausible in humans.

According to Scott Rivkees, Yale's Associate Chair of Pediatric Research and a senior researcher on the study, "Our studies raise potential concerns about caffeine exposure during very early pregnancy, but further studies are necessary to evaluate caffeine's safety during pregnancy."

To reach their conclusion researchers studied four groups of pregnant mice under two sets of conditions for 48 hours. The first two groups were studied in "room air," with one group having been injected with caffeine and another injected with saline solution. The second two groups were studied under conditions where ambient oxygen levels were halved, with one group receiving caffeine and the other receiving saline solution. They found that under both circumstances, mice given caffeine produced embryos with a thinner layer of tissue separating some of the heart's chambers than the group that was not given caffeine.

The researchers then examined the mice born from these groups to determine what long-term effects, if any, caffeine had on the offspring. They found that all of the adult males exposed to caffeine as fetuses had an increase in body fat of about 20 percent, and decreased cardiac function of 35 percent when compared to mice not exposed to caffeine.

"Caffeine is everywhere: in what we drink, in what we eat, in pills that we use to relieve pain, and even in candy," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "This report shows that despite popular notions of safety, there's one place it probably shouldn't be: in the diet of an expectant mother."

Notes:

The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) is published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and is the most cited biology journal worldwide according to the Institute for Scientific Information. FASEB comprises 21 nonprofit societies with more than 80,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. FASEB advances biological science through collaborative advocacy for research policies that promote scientific progress and education and lead to improvements in human health.

Article Details:
Christopher C. Wendler, Melissa Busovsky-McNeal, Satish Ghatpande, April Kalinowski, Kerry S. Russell, and Scott A. Rivkees. Embryonic caffeine exposure induces adverse effects in adulthood . FASEB J. first published on December 16, 2008 as doi:10.1096/fj.08-124941.
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/abstract/fj.08-124941v1