Trial reportBMC pregnancy and childbirth2020
A decrease in cesarean sections and labor inductions among Swedish women by awareness of fetal movements with the Mindfetalness method.
Trial report in BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT02865759 (Empowering Women to Shorten Pre-hospital Delay After Decreased Fetal Movements and Simultaneously Lower the Frequency of Unwarranted Visits - a Randomized Study), which is not on this map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Empowering Women to Shorten Pre-hospital Delay After Decreased Fetal Movements and Simultaneously Lower the Frequency of Unwarranted Visits - a Randomized Study
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effect of fetal movement awareness on birth outcomes among Somali migrant women - findings from a non-randomised intervention study in Sweden.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2026Trial
- Trait mindfulness in early pregnancy and adverse perinatal outcomes: a prospective cohort study.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMaternal perception of decreased fetal movements is commonly used to assess fetal well-being. However, there are different opinions on whether healthcare professionals should encourage maternal observation of fetal movements, as researchers claim that raising awareness increases unnecessary interventions, without improving perinatal health. We aimed to investigate whether cesarean sections and labor induction increase by raising women's awareness of fetal movements through Mindfetalness. Further, we aimed to study perinatal health after implementing Mindfetalness in maternity care.
methodsIn a cluster randomized controlled trial, 67 maternity clinics were allocated to Mindfetalness or routine care. In the Mindfetalness group, midwives distributed a leaflet telling the women to focus on the character, strength and frequency of the fetal movements without counting each movement. The instruction was to do so for 15 min daily when the fetus was awake, from gestational week 28 until birth. In this sub-group analysis, we targeted women born in Sweden giving birth from 32 weeks' gestation. We applied the intention-to-treat principle.
resultsThe Mindfetalness group included 13,029 women and the Routine-care group 13,456 women. Women randomized to Mindfetalness had less cesarean sections (18.4% vs. 20.0%, RR 0.92, CI 0.87-0.97) and labor inductions (19.2% vs. 20.3%, RR 0.95, CI 0.90-0.99) compared to the women in the Routine-care group. Less babies were born small for gestational age (8.5% vs. 9.3%, RR 0.91, CI 0.85-0.99) in the Mindfetalness group. Women in the Mindfetalness group contacted healthcare due to decreased fetal movements to a higher extent than women in the Routine care group (7.8% vs. 4.3%, RR 1.79, CI 1.62-1.97). The differences remain after adjustment for potential confounders.
conclusionsRaising awareness about fetal movements through Mindfetalness decreased the rate of cesarean sections, labor inductions and small-for-gestational age babies.
trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov ( NCT02865759 ). Registered 12 August 2016, www.clinicaltrials.gov .
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