being over 35 years of age. smoking, drinking alcohol or misusing drugs while pregnant. being obese – having a body mass index above 30. having a pre-existing physical health condition, such as epilepsy.
Women who experienced financial, emotional, or other personal stress in the year before their delivery had an increased chance of having a stillbirth. Smoking tobacco or marijuana, taking prescription painkillers, or using illegal drugs during pregnancy is associated with double or even triple the risk of stillbirth.
A stillbirth is the death of a fetus in the uterus after week 20 of pregnancy. The reasons go unexplained for 1 in 3 cases. The rest may be caused by problems with the placenta or umbilical cord, high blood pressure, infections, birth defects, or lifestyle choices.
Maternal factors, such as advanced maternal age, teenage pregnancies, maternal nutritional status, history of prior pregnancy losses, complicated pregnancies [4] and multiple pregnancies increase the risk of stillbirths.
The most common symptom of stillbirth is when you stop feeling your baby moving and kicking. Others include cramps, pain or bleeding from the vagina. Call your health care provider right away or go to the emergency room if you have any of these conditions.
At or after 40 weeks, the risk of stillbirth increases, especially for women 35 or older. Their risk, research shows, is doubled from 39 weeks to 40 and is more than six times as high at 42 weeks.
What causes a stillbirth? There can be a number of reasons why a baby is stillborn however sometimes a cause cannot be found. In Australia, the major causes of stillbirth are infection, the health of the mother, bleeding, a premature labour that cannot be stopped or an abnormality with the developing baby.
Stillbirth in Australia
In Australia, 6 babies are stillborn each day, affecting more than 2,000 Australian families each year.
Research has shown that in the third trimester (after 28 weeks of pregnancy) going to sleep on your back increases your risk of stillbirth. As the link has now been shown in four separate research trials, our advice is to go to sleep on your side in the third trimester because it is safer for your baby.
Symptoms of tokophobia
extreme fear of birth defects, stillbirth or maternal death. feelings of dread at the thought of pregnancy and birth. insistence on a caesarean section for the birth.
Research shows that stress during pregnancy can increase the risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes, including maternal health complications and prematurity. 1 In addition, some studies have found a possible connection between stress and early pregnancy loss.
Previous studies have shown that maternal factors alone can predict about 16% of all stillbirths at a 5% FPR, and that the addition of screening tests and biomarkers can improve the prediction rate to one third of all stillbirths at the end of first trimester and to nearly half of all stillbirths at the end of second ...
About half of all stillbirths happen after 28 weeks of pregnancy; many remain unexplained. Rates are even worse in low-income countries, but the U.S. stillbirth rate is higher than that of many other Western countries.
Most babies (91%) in Australia are born at term (37–41 weeks). This is similar across the states and territories and has been stable over time.
The risk of stillbirth at term increases with gestational age from 2.1 per 10,000 ongoing pregnancies at 37 weeks of gestation up to 10.8 per 10,000 ongoing pregnancies at 42 weeks of gestation.
In the United States, there are similar numbers of stillbirth deaths and deaths of infants during their first year of life. That is, about one-half of all deaths between 20 weeks of pregnancy and the first birthday occur before delivery.
The heart of the baby starts to beat around the fifth week of pregnancy. To confirm the heartbeat of your baby, the doctor may conduct a non-stress test. The test monitors the heart rate of the baby and provides information about the potential threat, if any. A healthy heartbeat is between 110 to 160 per minute.
A woman experiencing five or more stressful events was nearly 2.5 times more likely to have a stillbirth than a woman who had experienced none.
It's best to avoid lying on your back, especially in late pregnancy, when the weight of the heavy uterus can press on the large blood vessels in your belly. When lying on your side, keep your body in line, with your knees bent slightly, and avoid twisting.
Sleeping for more than nine hours per night, without disturbance, during pregnancy may be associated with late stillbirth, according to US researchers. Their study suggested that maternal sleep habits, including lengthy periods of sleep without waking more than once in the night, may be associated with foetal health.