title: A long-term monitoring of fetal movement at home using a newly developed sensor: an introduction of maternal micro-arousals evoked by fetal movement during maternal sleep.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Pregnant women's sleep disturbance due to fetal movement is well known. Fetal movement is thought to be an index of fetal well-being. However, as there has never been a way to easily and reliably record fetal movement, psychophysiological studies of pregnant women's sleep disturbance and fetal well-being have not been done.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To solve these methodological issues, we developed a new sensor with electrostatic capacity that can pick up acceleration of fetal movement.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Experiment I: We verified the reliability of our fetal movement recording system. Thirty-two pregnant women (from 19 to 39 weeks of gestation) were asked to lie down on a bed for about 1 h and to press a button as a subjective marker when they felt fetal movement. We simultaneously recorded maternal polysonograms and fetal movement from the mothers' abdomens using a Medilog recorder. The mean of prevalence-adjusted bias-adjusted kappa for agreements, based on time between fetal movement signals recorded and subjective maternal markers, was substantial at 0.75. Experiment II: We recorded seven pregnant women's polysonograms and fetal movement simultaneously during all-night sleep at home using our sensor during weeks 33 and 36 of gestation. We succeeded in recording maternal micro-arousals evoked by fetal movement. The mean value of the number of micro-arousals at 33 weeks was slightly larger than that at 36 weeks.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There was a high agreement between subjective maternal markers and fetal movement. Our recording system using the new sensor can be used for home monitoring of fetal movement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sleep Disorders Research, Tokyo Institute of Psychiatry, Tokyo 156-8585, Japan. knishi@prit.go.jp
authors.forename: Kyoko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nishihara
authors.forename: Shigeko
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Horiuchi
authors.forename: Hiromi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Eto
authors.forename: Makoto
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Honda
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004566:Electrodes; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000295:instrumentation; D005260:Female; D005323:Fetal Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation*; D005324:Fetal Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D009035:Mothers; D011247:Pregnancy; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors