Last year, Congress passed a resolution declaring September 19th National Stillbirth Prevention Day.

The day honors the more than 20,000 American families who lose a baby to stillbirth every year.

Supporters of new federal legislation aimed at increasing awareness and education about stillbirth say if passed, fewer families will have to suffer this profound loss.

It is a bit mind blowing that it's 2023 and we're still having this conversation.

Stillbirth is a crisis in the United States.

Every single year, we lose more than 21,000 babies to stillbirth.

So our organization exists to raise awareness about stillbirth.

We are most known for our count, the Stillbirth Prevention Program.

It is an awareness program for expectant parents in the third trimester of pregnancy to get to know their babies, normal movement patterns in the third trimester, and to speak up if they notice a change.

And the reason why that's important is because there's a lot of research that shows a change in a baby's movements in the third trimester is an early indication that sometimes the only indication that there might be something going wrong with that pregnancy.

It's not always possible to determine the actual cause, but we know that there are some risk factors that increase the mother's chances of having a stillbirth.

So, for example, if a mother is above a certain age and that is in our population above the age of 35, she's at an increased risk of stillbirth.

If she's a smoker, if she has high blood sugars, which is otherwise known as diabetes, has high blood pressures as well.

Those could be contributing factors.

Now, sometimes also the babies are not formed the way that they're supposed to, and they have structural abnormalities and that can put the baby at an increased risk of a stillbirth.

And unfortunately, despite all of our efforts and everything that we can do, we can definitely decrease the number dramatically.

But we can't prevent all stillbirths.

But it is a team effort.

So we always tell our expecting mothers whether they're high risk or low risk, to keep a close eye on the baby's kick count.

And if she's not feeling the baby move, then that would be an indication for her to call her doctors.

The Count the Kicks app has saved lives.

We have saved more than 100 lives that we know of collecting stories for moms and doctors in 35 states and in five countries.

In Iowa, where we started, we've seen a 32% stillbirth rate reduction.

So behind all of that data and the numbers of babies that we know we can save are real life stories of moms who write us and doctors who write us and say, I was paying attention, I was using your app.

I noticed a change in my baby's movements.

I alerted my doctor.

They ran tests.

They noticed that my baby was in distress and they made a decision to get that baby here safely.

The risk of stillbirth, you know, generally is about one in 160.

But if you follow the ultrasound schedule that is put for those people that are deemed to be high risk of stillbirth, and they do what we call a biophysical profile, which is when they look at certain things in the baby to tell us that the baby is healthy and happy, that number drops to one in 1250.

We see the tide changing in America.

That stillbirth has often been overlooked.

But I would say in the last two years we are really starting to see Congress pay attention.

We're seeing public health leaders pay attention to Maternal and Child health.

Stillbirth Prevention Act was introduced in Congress this summer.

There's overwhelming bipartisan support for it in both chambers because everybody wants babies to arrive safely.

And what this legislation would do is add the word stillbirth and stillbirth prevention to Title five.

There is some confusion with some state health departments about whether they can even use their title $5.

And it's also they're taking their cues from Congress because that's where the money comes from.

So if Congress isn't listing it as a priority, then it's also become not a priority for them.

And that needs to change because there are so many proven intervention efforts that if you just had that education there, that lives would be saved.

We just need to have more of the conversation in the prenatal space with more expectant parents.

Members of Healthy Birth Day are on Capitol Hill today speaking to lawmakers about stillbirth prevention legislation.