Count the Kicks: App saves baby after notifying mom that child had 'stopped moving' in womb
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA: If Shamari Cooke didn't have the Count the Kicks app on her phone, she might have lost her baby girl to a stillbirth. Still in her third trimester of pregnancy, the anxious mother rushed to the hospital when she felt something was wrong, thanks to the app.
The app, according to a first-time mother, who lives in Montgomery, is the only reason why her child is alive today. Aspen, the gorgeous eight-week-old baby girl, is the pride and joy of Cooke and her husband. “She’s doing really good, more alert,” Cooke said about her daughter while speaking to WSFA 12 News. “She’s very sassy and feisty. She’s my little angel.” It was Cooke's obstetrician-gynecologist who suggested she use the Count the Kicks app which keeps track of a baby's movements while within the womb. “As a first-time mom, I didn’t know that I was supposed to even count her kicks. I just assumed that they just move all the time,” she said.
RELATED ARTICLES
'Very emotional': Mother and daughter MAKE HISTORY as they pilot Southwest flight together
Cooke used the app to monitor her baby's movements every night throughout the third trimester, but on the evening of July 18, she felt something wasn't right. “The last time she had kicked was after I got off work at 5," explained Cooke. “So when I got home, me and my husband - we went walking, ate, and I laid down. I realized I hadn’t felt her since I got off work and so I drank ice water. Usually, that would get her to start moving, but I drank some ice water and she still didn’t move.”
Cooke and her husband made the decision to visit the hospital after a while. “It was crazy because the hospital is only 15 minutes away from our house,” Cooke said. “Those were the longest 15 minutes in my life because I kept trying to talk to my stomach like, ‘Come on, Aspen. Come on, Aspen. ‘Move, move, move.’” Despite finding the baby's heartbeat, doctors noticed that the amniotic fluid in Cooke's body was dangerously low. They carried out an urgent C-section.
“I’m just grateful... because what if I didn’t go to the hospital?” Cooke said. “The app itself is really there as the extra support for parents,” said Jasmine Hammonds, ambassador for Count the Kicks on what the users of the application can expect from their services. Cooke's narrative, according to Hammonds, exemplifies what they hope to achieve. “In Alabama, one out of every 113 pregnancies ends in stillbirth,” Hammonds said. Luckily, Cooke wasn't one of them because of their app.
