Count the Kicks: Providing resources for stillbirth prevention

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

A local Catholic is using her cross to try to save lives.

Seeking to better honor her stillborn son, Samantha LaCroix became an ambassador for Count the Kicks, a stillbirth prevention program that provides educational resources to healthcare providers and expectant parents. It involves parents monitoring their unborn baby’s movements during the third trimester and immediately contacting healthcare providers if there are significant changes.

A stillbirth is the loss of a baby before or during delivery, at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website cdc.gov. It says, “stillbirth affects about 1 in 175 births, and each year about 21,000 babies are stillborn in the United States.”

The website countthekicks.org describes the program’s ambassadors as “highly trained volunteers who help us educate and empower expectant parents in their states.”

Praying about her work as ambassador for Massachusetts led Mrs. LaCroix, of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Northborough, to expand her outreach. Her pastor, Father Juan D. Escudero who has also been personally affected by stillbirth, is helping.

Mrs. LaCroix’s story, which helps illustrate the relevance of Count the Kicks, began in 2012, when she was expecting her first child, Xavier. She told it this way.

“Throughout [the pregnancy] I was healthy, he was healthy,” she said.

At her 40-week appointment in April 2012, she told the nurse she felt great, but that Xavier was not moving as much as he had been.

Xavier’s heartbeat was strong, and she was told that if she did not go into labor within the week, labor would be induced, she said. In the meantime, an exam involving an ultrasound was scheduled.

The day of that exam Mrs. LaCroix did not feel Xavier moving, but figured she would wait to bring that up at her appointment a couple hours later.

“When’s the last time you felt your baby move?” the technician asked, after doing the exam. Breaking down as she retold this story, Mrs. LaCroix said, “That’s when I learned that my son had died.” She delivered him the next day. An autopsy did not reveal a definitive cause of death.

In Xavier’s honor, she and her husband, Brian LaCroix, had memorial Masses offered each April, lit candles for him on holidays and donated to charities for young children, she said.

Three years ago, on Xavier’s birthday – April 6, 2021 – Mrs. LaCroix took the day off from work to try to find a better way to honor him.

Doing internet research, she learned about Count the Kicks, started in 2008 by five Iowa mothers who had lost daughters to stillbirth or infant death. In 2009 they created Healthy Birth Day, a non-profit organization to help fund the spreading of the message, says the website countthekicks.org.

It says the mothers learned of research in Norway that demonstrated a 30% reduction in stillbirths when women monitored fetal movements.

“In the first 10 years of the Count the Kicks campaign in Iowa, the state’s stillbirth rate ... decreased nearly 32%, while the country as a whole” remained relatively stagnant, the website says. Healthy Birth Day created a network of hospitals, doctors and advocates across the United States who are spreading the message. The website says this program has “gone global thanks to our free kick counting app, which can be found in the iOS and Google Play app stores.” There are also printed materials and webinars.

Mrs. LaCroix said she didn’t know about kick counting until after she gave birth to her other children – Oliver, now 10, and Lillian, now 7.

“It made me angry that I never knew, and then it gave me hope” that stillbirths can be prevented, she said.

When she joined Count the Kicks in 2021 there was already a Massachusetts Ambassador, so she was called the Boston Ambassador, since she lived near there, she said. That’s still her title, in keeping with the email address, even though she’s now the only ambassador in the state and lives in Northborough, she said.

Last June, Count the Kicks and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health formed a partnership to help providers get free materials to educate parents, says the website countthekicks.org.

Mrs. LaCroix said she shared information with those who worked with her when she was expecting Xavier and with providers in Worcester.

She said she has given information to pregnant strangers she encounters, posted on Facebook stories of babies saved, and joined monthly conference calls for updates with Healthy Birth Day staff and ambassadors from other states.

She is also advocating for a federal bill that Healthy Birth Day helped initiate: “Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act.” This bill, H.R. 4581, adds stillbirth prevention to Title V of the Social Security Act, encouraging states to use federal money for this purpose, Mrs. LaCroix said.

“Now I’m coming down to my community,” she said. She informed Father Escudero about her work and is contacting places that help women give life to their babies instead of aborting them.

“When Samantha reached out asking to meet with me ... I really connected with her enthusiasm, because my own mom had stillbirths and miscarriages,” Father Escudero said by telephone from Colombia, where his family lives. “I know, from the experience of my parents ... how hard it is to lose a baby. ... In a beautiful way, my parents have always included those babies who are with God in our family,” remembering them and telling him and his sister to ask for their prayers.

He said his parents didn’t know about kick counting, that Count the Kicks is a wonderful initiative and that he ordered its materials in English and Spanish to display at church, make available in the parish office and give to pregnant women. He and Mrs. La- Croix talked about other ways to spread the word too.

“Even though it was a tragic outcome to have lost my son ... we all have our crosses,” Mrs. LaCroix said. She said if one can bring good out of a tragedy, the tragedy is never the end – “in this life or the next.”

– Editor’s note: Those seeking more information can contact Mrs. LaCroix at boston.ambassador@countthekicks.org.