Finley's Story, told by his Mum, Sarah:

On Tuesday 3rd August I noticed Finley's movements had slowly reduced. I didn't think much of it as I'd also had reduced movement with my toddler, as soon as I was on the monitor he started kicking!

By bedtime I had only felt him move six times all day, and I didn't feel him when my toddler woke up at 6am the following day as usual too. By this point I was getting quite worried. I started to panic, so I called the hospital and told them everything.

They advised me to go in and go on the monitor. I called a taxi and was quickly put on the monitor when I got to hospital. The midwife told me to move onto my side and drink some water because the baby's heart rate was high. The doctor came in and wasn't happy about his heart rate either, when he came back again twenty minutes later he said the baby needed to be delivered today!

I called my partner panicking. I asked him to get his parents over to look after the other kids, and to get to the hospital quickly, all while I was being taken upstairs to the labour ward. I was given a hospital gown and I had lots of doctors and nurses around me. I was quickly told that they baby needed to be delivered quickly, and there was no time to wait for my partner. I rang him, crying my eyes out, while signing forms. My head was a mess when I was taken to theatre, I can't really remember much about what happened in there.

Finley was born at 1.12pm and was taken to the neonatal unit. From calling the hospital to him being delivered was less than three hours!

The blood gasses from his cord showed he was in distress and needed to be born. Had I waited much longer they said it would have been a totally different story.

Finley was in neonatal for two weeks and he's now a happy healthy 9 week old.

Thanks to Kicks Count I realised, even if it took me all night to do something, that monitoring movement is so important. Please don't do what I did and wait until the next day - I should have gone the day before. Please make sure you look out for reduced movements and call the hospital if you think there's something wrong.