Pregnancy texts: tips for pregnant women and new moms
Some technological innovations are amazingly simple, and Text4Baby is one of them: Just text baby (or bebe for Spanish) to 511411, enter a due date or birth date, and you’ll get three texts a week with medical tips and information timed to your stage of pregnancy or your baby’s development up to one year.
Ain't high-tech great! With almost all of us using cell phones and smart phones, the medical community has figured out that it can tap into that market to promote better health habits.
In March, researchers at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania reported in a study that recorded instructions delivered via cell phone would improve the quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR.
Now a service exists for pregnant women – and women who have new babies – to get advice via text messages to their phones timed to their stage of pregnancy and their baby's development through its first year of life.
The service is free and it's available in English or Spanish. I just wish there was something like it for men – alerts for husbands and fathers during pregnancy and afterwords. Something like: When going to the store for pickle craving, pick up some double fudge chocolate ice cream too. Save yourself a trip. (Just joking, honey.)
My colleague Don Sapatkin reports that Philadelphia is now participating in the Text4Baby program – and he says that the program is, in fact, developing a version for dads!
Here's what he wrote:
Some technological innovations are amazingly simple, and Text4Baby is one of them: Just text baby (or bebe for Spanish) to 511411, enter a due date or birth date, and you'll get three texts a week with medical tips and information timed to your stage of pregnancy or your baby's development up to one year.
The texts are carried free by all the major cell phone providers, and the messages — with information known to improve a mother's or baby's health — are approved by a host of medical organizations that have signed onto the public-private partnership, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Nurse Midwives, and various federal health agencies.
About 35,000 women have signed up since Text4Baby was launched three months ago, including more than 1,700 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Philadelphia health commissioner Donald F. Schwarz announced the city's participation at a news conference at the Please Touch Museum Wednesday afternoon attended by a policy analyst from the White House.
The texts are one-way only — you can't ask questions — but they do say where to get more information. An example of a text, sent at week 8: "Fever in pregnancy can cause birth defects. Treat the fever right away with acetaminophen & call your Dr. or midwife! Find out more at 1-800-232-4636."