Count the Kicks - App Review

I'll be honest – in my first pregnancy, I thought keeping track of kick counts was just an unnecessary hassle, just one more thing for new parents to worry and stress out over. I had a little Intrapartum Fetal Movement sheet where I could write them down, but I never touched it.

Thankfully, all turned out well. However, early on in my second pregnancy I listened to stories of women who were able to save their babies' lives by staying aware of their normal movement patterns through the Count the Kicks program. I also heard about some who were, sadly, too late. I started to realize the importance of being really in tune with your body and your baby – not tracking every hiccup out of fear, but just maintaining an awareness of what is normal and not normal for your own baby.

I'm excited about the Count the Kicks free smartphone app because it will make it so convenient and simple for moms to keep track of their baby's activity. You don't need stacks of paper or a notebook and you don't need to search for a pencil – just sit down and rest with your phone and make sure you can feel your baby move at least 10 times in two hours.

So, here's what I loved about the app:

Convenient – I already needed to make sure I sat down and took a break each day, and my phone was usually not too far away.
Shows history – I liked being able to see a visual graph of all the sessions I recorded. This makes it easy to see if the baby's movements start to veer away from the pattern you establish.
Reminder function – I know for me at least, it took me a week or two to really get into the habit of doing this every day and not forgetting. The app has a reminder function for your calendar or email.

What I didn't love about it:

It's a tad laggy. Often, I would tap the blue footprint to record a movement, and nothing would happen. I'd wait several seconds, and try again, only for it to eventually record twice and throw off the total time a little bit.
Occasionally I would get a blank, frozen white screen when trying to use the app and I would need to restart it or press back several times to get to the main screen. Could be my phone or could be a bug that they are working out!
The app wanted me to go through a pretty long and complicated sign in process just to get started, including entering a lot of personal information. I didn't really like that and it was tedious, but once I initially got it set up I never had to enter anything ever again to start counting kicks.

Although as you can see there are a couple of small quirks about the app itself that I didn't care for, I believe that the Count the Kicks program is still important and if you are in the later stages of pregnancy, the app is a great one to have on your phone! It makes it so convenient to establish a baseline for how much movement is normal for your baby, and to show your care provider if necessary.

Find out more about Count the Kicks, and of course download the free app, here. You can also connect with the organization on Facebook!

Source: New feed