Each year, roughly 24,000 babies are stillborn in the United States, and one Iowa mom’s newborn daughter would have been one of those babies if it hadn’t been for a phone app.
Two years ago, mom Emily Eekhoff used the “Count the Kicks” app, which counts a baby’s movement in the womb during the third trimester, when she was pregnant with her first child. So when she became pregnant for the second time, she decided to use the app again.
“Normally anytime I would sit she would start to get active and usually I could get 10 kicks in under 10 minutes,” Emily said. So when Emily noticed her baby wasn’t as active as normal one day during her 33rd week of pregnancy, she started to get worried. “Lunch time I tried to do a count and sitting down I got maybe three kicks in a half hour which was unusual for sure.”
“It was so different and I wasn’t sure what to do exactly so I was just focused on trying to get her to move that I didn’t think too much of what could be going on necessarily,” Emily said. When nothing changed by the time her husband came home from work, they headed straight to the hospital. Doctors discovered baby Ruby was in distress and performed an emergency C-section after she failed to move at all during an ultrasound.
During the delivery, doctors discovered the umbilical cord was wrapped around Ruby’s neck three times. Ruby was born seven weeks early, but thankfully survived because the app detected something was wrong before any permanent damage was done. “It’s hard to know what could have been, but based on doctors, one more day she likely wouldn’t have been alive,” Emily said. “We had a couple weeks to go so we’re wrapping our heads around that she’s here… We could have been grieving instead of having a healthy baby.”
Can you believe what could have happened if this mom hadn’t used this app during her pregnancy? Let us know what you think in the comments below and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image: Inside Edition/Emily Eekhoff]
Phone App Saves Baby Being Choked By Umbilical Cord is an article from: LifeDaily