Kicks Count Needs Your Help!

Leading UK charity Kicks Count need YOUR help to continue saving lives.

As long-time fans of Kicks Count, we always direct our parenting community towards Kicks Count for advice on their baby's movements during pregnancy. The advice that they champion is medically supported by the NHS, and aims to dispel 'old wives tales' about fetal movements, myths that have heartbreakingly led to many stillbirths, neonatal deaths and brain injuries.

Who are Kicks Count and what do they do?

Kicks Count is the leading baby movement campaign, a non-profit charity who aim to raise awareness of the importance of fetal movements, and reduce stillbirth rates by empowering parents-to-be.

A change in movement is the biggest warning sign that a baby could be in distress, and 50% of mums who've had a stillbirth noticed that their baby 'slowed down'. In the UK, 7 babies are stillborn EACH DAY. UK statistics have improved, but we still see 4 per 1000 births ending in stillbirth, with rates worse than Poland, Croatia and the Czech Republic.

Heartbreakingly, old wives tales such as 'it's normal for a baby to slow down before labour', which is completely untrue, are still perpetuated with new mums unaware that they're being given outdated advice; sometimes through training issues, or due to older relatives being unaware. Kicks Count aims to bust these myths and leave dangerous advice in the past where it belongs.

The organisation was set up by their founder Sophia Wyatt in 2009, after her baby girl Sophie was stillborn. You can read more about this here.

Why do Kicks Count need some help?

So, as we mentioned at the start, Kicks Count really need some more support to continue their amazing mission of saving lives.

As a non-profit charity, Kicks Count gets NO government funding or support, relying solely upon donations to promote their life saving message. Recently, they shared an incredibly worrying message on their social media sharing that the charity is struggling, with them having to pause vital elements of the charity such as providing resources to hospitals.

Whilst the NHS guidance on fetal movements is mirrored by Kicks Count, it's fair to say that Kicks Count have a much more visible social media presence than the NHS resources, meaning that an expectant mum is far more likely to notice information about fetal movements that jogs her memory and triggers a check-up when it's posted by Kicks Count, than proactively look up the guidance after 2 days of not noticing any movements because she has been busy - you can imagine that the outcome, should there be anything wrong, would be MUCH more positive with early intervention. This is definitely one of the positives of social media, without a doubt.

Thankfully, by reaching out, Kicks Count were able to rally more support, meaning that they were able to continue funding their vital literature. Within days, they shared a thank you message, announcing that Kicks Count could indeed continue. However, they still need consistent and continued support in order to deliver this very important information to all expectant mums!

What can I do to help Kicks Count?

So, having read what Kicks Counts does, you can see how important they are. There's so many things that you can do to boost Kicks Count, their visibility, and of course, their funding, without much needed from you. You can do any of the following;

Follow them on social media
Engage with and share their social media posts
Choose Kicks Count as your Amazon Smile charity option - 0.5% of your shop cost gets donated to the charity, at no cost to you
Set up your own fundraising event; email Tracy on fundraising@kickscount.org.uk

You can also donate by text; simply text KICKS LIT to 70660 to donate £3 or COUNT LIT to 70660 to setup a monthly donation of £3. You can change the amount by adding a different amount after KICKS LIT (eg KICKS LIT £5). For one-off texts, it costs £3 plus network charge. Kicks Count receives 100% of your donation. You can also join the Kicks Count subscription program for £3 per month, with the charity receiving 100% - just text STOP to end the subscription.

And remember...

Babies do not 'slow down before labour'.
It isn't 'normal' for babies to 'slow down'.
Babies do not 'run out of room' no matter how big - their movements may change in type once they become bigger, but their pattern should remain the same.
ALL changes should be reported - not just a reduction or 'slowing down', although there seems to be a bigger emphasis on reduced movements. Always report baby moving a lot more, too.
Fetal movement information may be different in countries outside of the UK, but this is due to a time lag in outdated information being changed, whereas the UK fetal movement guidance is the most current.

Read the NHS guidance here.

Read more articles on the importance of fetal movements here...