Women's' premonitions prior to the death of their baby in utero and how they deal with the feeling that their baby may be unwell.

Objective. To identify if mothers to stillborn babies had had a premonition that their unborn child might not be well and how they dealt with that premonition. Design. A mixed method approach. Setting: 1 034 women answered a web questionnaire. Sample: 614 women fulfilled the inclusion criteria of having a stillbirth after the 22(nd) gestational week and answered questions about premonition. Methods. Qualitative content analysis was used for the open questions and descriptive statistics for questions with fixed alternatives. Main Outcome.Measure: The premonition of an unwell unborn baby. Results. In all 392/614 (64%) of the women had had a premonition that their unborn baby might be unwell; 274/614 (70%) contacted their clinic and were invited to come in for a check-up, but by then it was too late as the baby was already dead. A further 88/614 (22%) decided to wait until their next routine check-up, believing that the symptoms were part of the normal cycle of pregnancy, and that the fetus would move less towards the end of a pregnancy. Thirty women (8%) contacted their clinic, but were told that everything appeared normal without an examination of the baby. Conclusion. Women need to know that a decrease in fetal movements is an important indicator of their unborn baby´s health. Health care professionals should not delay an examination if a mother-to-be is worried of her unborn baby´s wellbeing.