Pregnancy Health

Quickening – Feeling Your Baby Move in Pregnancy

One of the most exciting aspects of pregnancy is feeling your baby’s little kicks and flutters for the first time. Feeling your baby’s movements in utero gives you reassurance that he or she is developing, and it makes you feel closer and more connected to the baby growing inside you. Fetal movements (or feeling your baby move for the first time) is called quickening in pregnancy.

When Will You Feel Your Baby Move?

Though you didn’t feel your baby’s acrobats in the first trimester, he or she has been moving in the womb since 7 or 8 weeks of pregnancy. In the first trimester, your baby was too small and his or her fetal movements were too subtle for you to be aware of.

For most women, they won’t feel the baby’s first movements until the second trimester – sometime between 16 and 22 weeks pregnant. If this is your first pregnancy, you may not feel your baby’s subtle fetal movements (called quickening in pregnancy) until 22 weeks pregnant.

Women who have been pregnant before tend to feel their baby’s movements earlier than first-time moms. It’s possible that second-time moms are more able to distinguish their baby’s flutters from other belly rumblings – such as gas and hunger pains.

Overweight Women Feel Baby’s Kicks Later

Your body shape may also play a role in when you’ll feel quickening in pregnancy — i.e. your baby’s first movements. Skinner women can usually feel their baby’s kicks and somersaults earlier and more frequently than overweight or obese women. If you’re overweight or obese, you may not feel the first fetal movements until later in the second trimester.

Quickening & The Position of the Placenta

The position of your placenta can also affect when you’ll feel quickening in pregnancy. For example, if you have an anterior placenta – your placenta is located on the front wall of your uterus – this will cushion your baby’s movements, and you may feel your baby’s movements slightly later.

Don’t worry if you haven’t felt your baby move for the first time yet. As your belly gets larger, you will soon get to feel these fetal movements.

What Does Quickening (Baby’s First Movements) Feel Like?

Quickening in pregnancy is a different sensation for everyone. The sensation of your baby’s movements may be similar to butterflies fluttering in your stomach, fish swimming around, popcorn popping, or a tumbling motion.

At first, you may confuse your baby’s gentle kicks with hunger pains and gas. As your second trimester progresses, you will feel your baby’s movements more frequently, and it will be easier to recognize the difference between quickening and other belly rumblings. (By the third trimester, your baby’s kicks, jabs, and elbows will be very distinct.)

How Often Should You Feel the Baby Move?

Try not to worry about how often your baby moves. It differs from baby to baby. Every baby has his own level of normal fetal activity.

At first, the fetal movements that you experience will be sporadic. You might feel several gentle taps or flutters one day, and one the next. Although your unborn baby continues to move around in your womb, his movements may not be strong enough for you to feel. By the end of the second trimester, his or her kicks should be quite strong.

In the third trimester, you’ll be able to distinguish a regular sleep-wake pattern. You may find that your baby is most active and awake during the nighttime hours, when you’re trying to fall asleep, and he or she may little movements during the daytime. (Did you know that babies dream? They do experience REM sleep, just like you!)

After you’ve felt your baby kick and move for a while, you should be able to pick up the regularity of his movements. If you suddenly feel that there is a decrease of any kind in his or her fetal movements, contact your doctor right away. This can be a sign of a serious problem. If there is no decrease in your baby’s normal kicks and movements, then you shouldn’t worry. He or she is just fine!

When To Keep Track of Baby’s Kicks

Once your baby starts to move regularly – this usually occurs by pregnancy week 28 – you may consider keeping track of your baby’s movements on a daily basis. There are a variety of methods of doing “kick counts,” so you’ll want to ask your doctor or healthcare provider for his or her recommendations.

You can buy a baby kick recorder, or you can count your baby’s kicks yourself. To count your baby’s kicks, you should pick a time of day that your baby is most active. Use a watch and time how long it takes for you to feel ten distinct fetal movements. If you don’t feel ten movements within two hours, call your doctor right away.

When Should You Worry about Fetal Movements

You will want to contact your healthcare provider if you’ve noticed that your baby’s movements have slowed down significantly. For example, if your baby was quite active, but then he suddenly stops kicking. This may be a sign of a problem. Your doctor can perform a non-stress test, which will check your baby’s heart rate and movements.

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How Safe is the Full Body Scanner for Pregnant Women?

by DP Nguyen 8 Comments

With all the talk and controversy against the new Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) full body scanners, this begs the question – how safe are they for pregnant women? These full body scanners do emit radiation – after all, they are taking an x-ray of your body – but how much radiation do they emit? Will they cause harm to the pregnant woman and her developing baby?

Everyone knows that radiation is unhealthy for the everyday Joe and Jane. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns that long-term, low-level exposure to radiation can cause mutations in your DNA, and it increases your risk of cancer. The DNA mutations can affect your health, and it can also be passed down to your future children. According to the EPA’s Website, there is no “safe” level of radiation exposure.

Smoking in Pregnancy Linked to Future Criminal Children

by DP Nguyen 3 Comments

Smoking mothers of the world listen up! It’s more important than ever to quit smoking during pregnancy . . . unless you want to have criminals for children.

A new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Healthhas found a correlation between maternal smoking in pregnancy and a higher incidence of crime in the children once they grew up. To simplify, women who smoke during pregnancy became the future moms of adult criminals!

So unless you want to be visiting your kids in prison for Thanksgiving or Christmas, you better break that bad smoking habit before you get pregnant!

Previous studies have linked maternal smoking during pregnancy to causing behavior and attention problems in kids and teenagers. But this new study, just released this week, finds a longer-term consequence of smoking in pregnancy.

Overview of Triplet Pregnancy

by DP Nguyen 4 Comments

Pregnancy takes a lot out of your body – physically and emotionally. With a single baby, it’s tough enough, but when you’re pregnant with triples or multiples, this takes pregnancy to another ballpark. All your pregnancy symptoms are worse when you’re carrying multiples. From severe bouts of morning sickness to extreme fatigue to horrible backaches, a multiple pregnancy is tough.

High Risk Pregnancy

In addition to having the worst pregnancy symptoms, a triplet pregnancy puts you at higher risk for pregnancy complications – including increasing your risk of gestational diabetes (diabetes that suddenly develops when you’re pregnant, and then disappears after your baby is born), pregnancy-related hypertension (high blood pressure), uterine bleeding, c-section delivery, and pre-term birth. In fact, 75 to 100 percent of all triplets are born premature.

Did you know that the average length of a triplet pregnancy is about 32 weeks? That’s why you are considered a “high risk” pregnancy when you have three lives growing in your womb.

Tylenol and Other Painkillers May Be Risky During Pregnancy

by DP Nguyen 4 Comments

If you’re pregnant with a baby boy, you’ll want to pay close attention to the latest research findings out of the UK. New research suggests that prolonged use of the painkiller paracetamol (acetaminophen in the U.S.), aspirin, and ibuprofen may be linked to increasing the risk of un-descended testicles in male babies – a condition called “cryptorchidism” that affects between 3 and 4 percent of all full-term babies.

Cryptorchidism puts the affected babies at risk for infertility later in life and a higher chance of cancer in both testicles. In fact, little boys who are born with an un-descended testicle have a 20 to 40 times increased risk of developing testicular cancer later in life. That’s why doctors recommend surgery and hormone therapy to help the affected testicle descend into the scrotum.

This new research study looked at 2,000 pregnant women and their babies. The European researchers found that women who used more than one painkiller at the same time – for example, ibuprofen (Advil) and acetaminophen (Tylenol) – were at seven times the risk of giving birth to baby boys with some form of un-descended testicles, compared to women who took no painkillers at all.

Second Trimester – a Significant Time

The second trimester appeared to be the most sensitive time for babies. Taking any painkiller in the second trimester doubled the risk of cryptorchidism. Of the various painkillers, ibuprofen and aspirin put the babies at four times the risk, and acetaminophen (called “paracetamol” Europe) doubled the baby’s risk. Taking more than one painkiller simultaneously in the second trimester increased the baby’s risk by 16 times!

The researchers believe that taking painkillers during pregnancy interferes with the natural balance of male hormones (such as testosterone) at work in unborn male babies, and this may slow down normal fetal development. It’s possible that the second trimester is more crucial, since it’s in the middle part of pregnancy that male testicles start to descend into the scrotum.

Lead scientist of the study, Dr. Henrik Leffers, said this: “If exposure to endocrine disruptors is the mechanism behind the increasing reproductive problems among young men in the Western World, this research suggests that particular attention should be paid to the use of mild analgesics during pregnancy, as this could be a major reason for the problems.”

More Research Needed

This study had some limitations. For example, not all of the women accurately remembered how often they took painkillers. More research needs to be done before doctors can recommend that you take no painkillers what so ever.

The research is published in November 8, 2010 issue of Human Reproduction, Europe’s leading reproductive medical journal.

Current Recommendations on Pain Medication during Pregnancy

For years, doctors have routinely recommended that pregnant women use acetaminophen (Tylenol) to relieve any aches and pains during pregnancy. Aspirin, ibuprofen, and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are typically not recommended in pregnancy due to their link to miscarriage, slow fetal growth, and other problems. Aspirin is sometimes prescribed to pregnant women with preeclampsia (high blood pressure and protein in the urine), but in these special cases, the good must outweigh the bad effects.

This new study does make you think twice about taking any medications during pregnancy – even ones that are considered “safe” in small doses.

What do you think about this new study? Are you willing to take medication during pregnancy?

New Study: Severe Morning Sickness is Genetic on Both Sides of Families

by DP Nguyen 1 Comment

Ask anyone who has ever been pregnant, and they will regale you with stories of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy – commonly known as “morning sickness.” Researchers estimate that between 50 to 90 percent of all pregnant women will experience some level of morning sickness in their first trimester. Some pregnant women are just slightly nauseous, while others have horrible bouts of vomiting and queasiness.

Morning sickness is one of the early signs of pregnancy, and it can hit women as early as 6 weeks pregnant. It typically starts to peak around 8 or 9 weeks pregnant, and for most women, it disappears completely by the second trimester. (That’s why the second trimester is called the “honeymoon” phase of pregnancy – all your horrible first trimester pregnancy symptoms go away!)

Unfortunately, for a small number of pregnant women, they continue to have severe morning sickness throughout all 40 weeks of pregnancy. This condition is called “hyperemesis gravidarum,” and it’s defined by extreme, persistent nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. In other words, you are constantly throwing up and feeling nauseous throughout your entire pregnancy. This condition can lead to dehydration, malnutrition, and significant weight loss. Approximately 60,000 pregnant women are hospitalized annual from this extreme form of morning sickness.

For years, the cause of hyperemesis gravidarum was largely unknown, though researchers had several theories. Many scientists believed that severe morning sickness was caused by the rapidly rising levels of the pregnancy hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), which is secreted by the placenta. That’s why women who carried twins are more likely to develop hyperemesis gravidarum.

According to a new study, published online today in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, pregnant women whose sisters suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum are 17 times more likely to suffer from this debilitating morning sickness.

Researchers from the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California (USC) traced the family histories of women with hyperemesis gravidarum and discovered that this severe morning sickness had a strong genetic component.

Women who had sisters, mothers, and grandmothers on both sides of the family (paternal and maternal) were at a heightened risk of developing hyperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy. This was especially true if the pregnant women had sisters who suffered from the pregnancy complication.

The authors of this study looked at 650 participants. The pregnant women in the study had been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum; the controls were women with at least two pregnancies that lasted longer than 27 weeks and who had not suffered from severe morning sickness. The researchers compared the family history of morning sickness in the pregnant women and the controls.

They discovered that the women with hyperemesis gravidarum with a sister who suffered from the same form of severe morning sickness were 17.3 times more likely to have the condition. In addition, 33 percent of the pregnant women reported having a mother who suffered from the condition, compared to only 8 percent of the controls.

When the researchers traced back to grandmothers’ pregnancies, they found that 18 percent of the pregnant women with severe morning sickness had a maternal grandmother with the same condition, and 23 percent of the pregnant women had a paternal grandmother – suggesting this condition is inherited through the father’s side of the family.

“Because the incidence of hyperemesis gravidarum is most commonly reported to be 0.5 percent in the population, and the sisters of cases have as much as an 18-fold increased familial risk for HG compared to controls, this study provides strong evidence for a genetic component to extreme nausea and vomiting in pregnancy,” the researchers concluded in the study.

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