The BabyKick Alliance was established in April 2005 by Dr. Diep Nguyen, a practicing Los Angeles-based obstetrician and gynecologist. Through this alliance, support and partnerships with other organizations, Dr. Nguyen hopes to promote stillbirth prevention through public awareness, education, and advocacy of the Kick Count method.

The Kick Count method allows pregnant women to track significant changes in their baby's fetal movements in order to help them identify potential problems with their pregnancy before the baby's heart rate is affected. Every year, stillbirth claims the lives of 26,000 babies -70 per day - 10 times that of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Nguyen fled from Viet Nam with her family as boat people in 1975. She is a graduate of the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She is boarded in Family Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Nguyen is a member of the Los Angeles OB-GYN Society and is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She served as the volunteer medical director at the Oscar Romero Free Clinic in Los Angeles and for Xela-Aid, a humanitarian relief organization in Guatemala. She also co-founded the Tijuana Medical Project for minority undergraduate students.

Dr. Nguyen has dedicated her professional life to the care of pregnant women. Her inspiration for establishing the BabyKick Alliance dates back to the age of 12 when she witnessed the stillbirth of her sister at full term. After 10 years of infertility, her younger sister nearly had the same tragedy. Fortunately, her sister had noticed her baby's decreased kicks alerting her to seek care. Severely decreased amniotic fluid was discovered which led to the induction of labor and the birth of Dr. Nguyen's niece at 37 weeks.

As a mother of three children, taking care of mothers with stillbirths makes
Dr. Nguyen's job as a physician particularly poignant. At times, she wondered whether a life could have been saved if she had the chance to intervene earlier.

Dr. Nguyen became an avid supporter of Kick Count after seeing patients whose vigilance of their baby's movements helped them avert tragedy and deliver a healthy baby. Many women are unaware of Kick Count as an effective method of monitoring the health of the unborn child even though it is recommended by public health departments and organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the International Stillbirth Alliance.

According to the MOMS study, only 50% of pregnant women were told by their doctors about Kick Count. "Even for those who are aware of the widely available kick count charts," Dr. Nguyen says, "few women do the count correctly or consistently."

The BabyKick Alliance was established to support and promote stillbirth prevention through education and awareness in partnership with other organizations. This website provides pregnant women and obstetrical providers with important information on Kick Count and updated references on stillbirth research.

Even one stillborn is too many!