Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Fielding.
Kimberly, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Before there was Kicks & Flutters, before the credentials after my name, before Maternal Fetal Medicine, leadership, or more than a decade in medical imaging, there was a young single mom coming out of an abusive relationship with a young son who depended on her. I was trying to rebuild my life, but I was not rebuilding it for just myself anymore. I had a little boy looking to me for his home, his security, and his future. I knew one thing with absolute certainty: I never wanted to feel helpless again.
I wanted an education, a career, and the kind of stability that meant no matter what happened, I could take care of my son and stand on my own two feet. At the time, I thought I was simply trying to create a safer future for us. I had no idea how much that determination would shape the woman, healthcare professional, and eventually business owner I would become.
My career in medical imaging began in 2014. I graduated at the top of my class from NHTI, Concord’s Community College in Concord, New Hampshire, with a 4.0 GPA and became a registered radiologic technologist. I was then hired at the small-town hospital in Laconia, New Hampshire, where I had been born. There was something full circle about beginning my professional life in the same hospital where my own life had started, although I did not fully appreciate that at the time.
I had accomplished what I had set out to do. I had an education. I had a career. I could support myself and my son. Then I became curious about ultrasound.
I would see the sonographers working and wonder how they could look at a screen filled with black, white, and gray and understand exactly what they were seeing. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me, and I asked if I could observe some exams. Then I watched my first pregnancy ultrasound.
I remember seeing that tiny baby moving on the screen, the beating heart, the hands, the feet, and being completely fascinated that all of it was being visualized with sound waves. I was hooked.
I applied to a competitive Diagnostic Medical Sonography program and was accepted. My clinical education exposed me to obstetrics and gynecology, breast, abdominal, and vascular ultrasound. I wanted to understand not only how to obtain an image, but what I was seeing, why it mattered, and what subtle findings could change a diagnosis. I progressed quickly enough that I was hired as a student sonographer before graduating, and by graduation I had already earned two professional registries, including my Abdomen credential as a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. I kept going, earning additional credentials and expanding my knowledge across multiple specialties.
I worked for roughly six years at my hometown hospital in Laconia and also worked per diem at Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Eventually, my family and I made a major change. We left New Hampshire and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, looking for warmer weather and greater opportunity. That move changed the direction of my career.
Obstetric ultrasound had become the area I loved most, and I was hired as a Maternal Fetal Medicine sonographer. MFM was a completely different level of obstetric imaging. These were highly detailed examinations, often involving high risk or complicated pregnancies. I was evaluating fetal anatomy, growth, development, and tiny structures of the fetal heart, sometimes looking for findings measured in millimeters. The responsibility was enormous, and I loved it. I immersed myself in advanced fetal imaging, particularly fetal echocardiography, and earned my fetal echo credential.
I wanted the physicians I worked with to trust my images, and I wanted every mother lying on my table to receive the most thorough examination possible. But as much as I loved the work, I became increasingly frustrated by something I had seen throughout healthcare. Time was part of it.
These were incredibly detailed examinations, yet appointment times did not always reflect the complexity of what sonographers were being asked to accomplish. I hated feeling rushed, not because I wanted an easier workday, but because there was a human being on my table. There might be a mother lying there wondering if her baby was okay. Maybe she had experienced a previous loss. Maybe something concerning had already been found. Maybe she had barely slept the night before. She did not know that another patient was scheduled after her, and she should not have had to care. In that moment, this was her baby, her fear, her questions, and her life.
I repeatedly advocated for more scanning time because I believed the quality of these examinations demanded it. But eventually I realized my frustration was not just about time. It was about a much bigger problem. Healthcare can become so focused on schedules, productivity, patient volume, and getting to the next appointment that the person inside the system can start to feel like a number.
Just a year and a half after I was hired as an MFM sonographer, I was promoted to Ultrasound Supervisor for the practice. For the next three years, I managed and trained sonographers, worked with clinical quality and workflows, handled scheduling and operational challenges, and saw healthcare from both sides. I understood why schedules mattered. I understood staffing, productivity, patient volume, and the enormous pressures placed on healthcare teams. I also understood that most people working in healthcare genuinely care about their patients.
But understanding how the system works did not make me any more comfortable with how patients could feel inside of it. If anything, leadership made the problem clearer.
Throughout my career, patients had been telling me versions of the same thing: “The other sonographer barely talked to me.” “She wouldn’t let me see the screen.” “I didn’t know what she was looking at.” “It hurt.” And the one that stayed with me most: “I felt like I was just another patient.”
There is no such thing as just another patient. That is somebody’s mother, daughter, wife, husband, child, or friend. That is a person who may have been losing sleep over an appointment we perform every day. An exam that feels routine to us may be one of the most frightening appointments they have ever had. People bring their emotions with them. Their fears. Their questions. Their previous losses. Their worst-case scenarios. They do not leave any of that in the parking lot.
That realization became a huge part of my why.
I loved ultrasound, but I kept hearing from patients who dreaded it because of the way previous experiences had made them feel. The technology was not the problem. The experience was.
I started thinking about what ultrasound could look like if clinical excellence and compassion were treated as equally important. What if people had time to ask questions? What if they could see what I was seeing? What if they did not feel rushed? What if healthcare could feel more personal?
Eventually I asked myself one question that changed everything: Why does ultrasound always have to happen inside a hospital or imaging center?
In September 2022, I started Kicks & Flutters.
At first, the concept was simple. I would bring elective pregnancy ultrasound directly into the home. I packed up my ultrasound machine and started walking through people’s front doors. Immediately, the experience felt different. I could connect my machine to the family television. Parents could watch together. Siblings and grandparents could be part of the experience. People could ask questions, laugh, cry, and take in the moment without feeling like the next appointment was waiting outside the door. It was comfortable, private, and personal.
Clients started telling me over and over how different it felt. I kept hearing, “I wish all ultrasounds were like this.”
That was exactly what I had hoped to create.
But my background extended far beyond elective pregnancy ultrasound, and it did not take long for me to start thinking bigger. What if the same model could be used for medical ultrasound? What if a woman could have a dating or viability ultrasound at home? What if she needed a 20 week anatomy survey? What if someone found a breast lump and wanted a private diagnostic breast ultrasound? What about fertility monitoring, gynecologic imaging, thyroid or abdominal ultrasound, vascular studies, or fetal surveillance?
What if I could bring professional diagnostic ultrasound directly to the patient too?
That is what Kicks & Flutters has grown into.
Today, I offer both keepsake pregnancy ultrasound and medical ultrasound in the comfort and privacy of the patient’s home. Keepsake pregnancy services include 2D, 3D, and 4D imaging. Medical pregnancy services include viability and dating exams, anatomy surveys, follow up anatomy, growth ultrasounds, biophysical profiles, fetal position, amniotic fluid evaluation, and cervical length when appropriate.
Kicks & Flutters has also expanded far beyond pregnancy. I offer diagnostic breast ultrasound, fertility ultrasound monitoring, gynecologic ultrasound, thyroid and general abdominal ultrasound, vascular studies, and at home nonstress testing. Diagnostic ultrasound examinations are performed by me and interpreted by a board-certified radiologist, while fertility monitoring results are sent directly to the patient’s fertility provider for treatment timing and decision making.
The services have grown, but the reason behind them has not changed.
The entire model is built around two things I believe should never be separated: clinical excellence and the human experience.
When I walk into someone’s home, I am entering their world instead of asking them to enter mine. They are not navigating an unfamiliar hospital or sitting under fluorescent lights in a waiting room. Their spouse may be beside them. Their children may be nearby. They are in an environment where they already feel comfortable. I can connect my machine to their television, show them what I am evaluating, explain what they are seeing when appropriate, listen to their questions, and give the examination the attention it deserves.
That is the heart of Kicks & Flutters. It is not simply about bringing an ultrasound machine into someone’s home. It is about changing the way people experience ultrasound.
Sometimes I think about the young woman at the beginning of this story. The young mother coming out of an abusive relationship with a little boy depending on her. She was not thinking about ultrasound or entrepreneurship. She was simply trying to build a life where she would never feel helpless again.
I wish I could tell her that one day she would graduate at the top of her class. That she would begin her career in the hospital where she was born. That curiosity would lead her into an ultrasound room and completely change her life. That she would become a sonographer, move hundreds of miles away, work in Maternal Fetal Medicine, study tiny fetal hearts, and be promoted to lead an ultrasound department just a year and a half after she arrived.
I would tell her that the parts of healthcare that bothered her would eventually become just as important as the parts she loved. That the patients who said they felt rushed, ignored, or invisible would stay with her. That one day she would load an ultrasound machine into her vehicle and drive to someone’s house because she believed there had to be a better way.
And that idea would grow into something far bigger than she imagined.
Looking back now, the pieces make sense. The education. The hospitals. The specialties. The credentials. Maternal Fetal Medicine. Leadership. The frustration with time. The broken parts of healthcare. The patients who taught me never to forget the person behind the appointment.
None of it was wasted.
Kicks & Flutters was never created because I wanted to leave ultrasound. Quite the opposite. I wanted to bring ultrasound to the people. I created it because I love ultrasound enough to believe people deserve a better way to experience it.
I thought I was rebuilding my life. Then I thought I was building a career.
Looking back now, I can see that God was preparing me to build Kicks & Flutters the entire time.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely has not been a smooth road. In the beginning, there were weeks when I had no clients at all. I would put so much time, energy, and hope into building Kicks & Flutters and then have days or even an entire week with nothing on the schedule. When you are building a business from scratch, those quiet weeks can make you question everything.
One of my biggest challenges was simply getting people to know I existed. Because I do not have a traditional brick and mortar location with a sign that people drive past every day, I did not have the visibility that many new businesses rely on. I was offering something most people had never heard of before, so I had to find a way to reach them and then explain why at home ultrasound was even an option.
Advertising has been one of the biggest learning curves. I have spent thousands of dollars on Google Ads and magazine advertising with absolutely no return on that investment. Google Ads in particular can be incredibly complicated to navigate if you do not understand how to optimize them, and I learned that lesson the expensive way. Without a physical storefront bringing visibility to the business, I have had to rely heavily on word of mouth, patient referrals, social media, and the people who have experienced Kicks & Flutters and believed in it enough to tell someone else. In many ways, that slower, more organic growth has ultimately built the strongest foundation for the business.
Expanding from keepsake pregnancy ultrasound into medical diagnostic imaging brought an entirely different set of challenges. I was not opening another ultrasound studio or traditional imaging center. I was trying to create a different model of care by bringing professional ultrasound directly into people’s homes, and there was no roadmap sitting in front of me telling me how to do it.
I had to build the infrastructure behind it, including finding the right radiology partnership, developing clinical protocols, creating compliant workflows, understanding regulations, and figuring out how to make diagnostic ultrasound accessible outside of the traditional hospital or imaging center setting without compromising clinical quality.
There has also been the challenge of educating people about what I actually do. When people hear “at home ultrasound,” many immediately think of keepsake pregnancy imaging. While I still love providing 2D, 3D, and 4D pregnancy experiences, Kicks & Flutters has grown into so much more. I now provide medical pregnancy ultrasound, breast ultrasound, fertility monitoring, gynecologic, abdominal, thyroid and vascular ultrasound, as well as at home nonstress testing. Helping patients and healthcare professionals understand that diagnostic ultrasound can be performed in the home by an experienced registered sonographer and interpreted by a board certified radiologist has required a tremendous amount of education and persistence.
Running a business has also forced me to learn an entirely different skill set. I knew ultrasound. I knew patient care. I knew leadership and healthcare operations. I did not automatically know marketing, SEO, websites, scheduling platforms, advertising, pricing, contracts, accounting, compliance, or all of the other things that suddenly become your responsibility when your name is on the business. As a small business owner, there is no department down the hall to hand those problems to. You figure them out.
There have absolutely been times when it became overwhelming. There have been countless moments when I thought about quitting. Moments when I was exhausted, frustrated, discouraged, or simply overwhelmed by how much there was to figure out. Sometimes it felt like every time I solved one problem, another one appeared. There were moments when walking away would have been easier. But I kept going.
Deep down, I have always believed that if I never quit, I will never truly fail. I may make mistakes. I may lose money. I may make the wrong decision and have to change direction. I may try something that does not work. But I have learned that those things are not failures. They are lessons, and sometimes very expensive ones.
That mindset has carried me through some of the hardest parts of building Kicks & Flutters, and I am so grateful I did not give up during the moments when I wanted to. Some of the things I struggled with the most ultimately taught me the most about business and about myself.
Kicks & Flutters today looks very different from the business I started in September 2022. It has grown from an idea and weeks with an empty schedule into a business providing ultrasound services I once was not even sure could be successfully brought into the home. The road has not been smooth, and I do not expect it always will be. But every challenge has forced me to become a better business owner, a better problem solver, a better healthcare professional, and a person much more willing to trust herself when the path ahead is not completely clear.
I have made mistakes, and I will make more. I have learned that building something meaningful is not about getting everything right the first time. It is about being willing to learn when you get it wrong, adjust when something is not working, and keep moving forward even when you are not completely sure what the next step looks like.
There were countless times I thought about quitting, and I am so grateful now that I didn’t. Some of the moments that felt like failures at the time ended up teaching me the exact lessons I needed to grow Kicks & Flutters into what it is today.
I have come to believe that failure is not making a mistake, wasting money, choosing the wrong strategy, or trying something that does not work. Those are lessons. The only way I truly fail is if I stop trying.
So I keep going. I keep learning. I keep building.
And when I look at how far Kicks & Flutters has come from those weeks when I had no clients at all, I am really glad I never quit.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I think what sets me apart professionally is the range of experience I have built throughout my career and the fact that I have never stopped wanting to learn more. Ultrasound is incredibly operator dependent. The quality of an examination depends heavily on the knowledge, experience, and skill of the person holding the transducer, and I take that responsibility very seriously.
Over the years, I have worked across multiple specialties including obstetrics, Maternal Fetal Medicine, fetal echocardiography, breast, abdomen, gynecology, and vascular imaging. I have earned multiple professional credentials, and I have always pursued additional education because I genuinely love what I do. I am still curious. If I see something unusual, I want to understand it. If there is an area where I can become better, I want to learn it.
Maternal Fetal Medicine was one of the most influential parts of my career. It challenged me technically and taught me an incredible amount about attention to detail. I developed a particular love for imaging the fetal heart and went on to earn my fetal echocardiography credential. MFM taught me that sometimes the finding that matters is subtle. You have to know normal anatomy extremely well before you can recognize when something is not normal, and you have to be willing to keep looking when something does not make sense.
My years in leadership also shaped me professionally. As an Ultrasound Supervisor, I was no longer responsible only for the quality of my own work. I was responsible for helping maintain clinical standards across a team, training and supporting other sonographers, troubleshooting difficult situations, developing workflows, and balancing the needs of patients, sonographers, physicians, and the practice itself. That experience taught me an entirely different side of healthcare and made me a stronger sonographer and business owner.
But when I think about what I am most proud of professionally, it is taking the leap of faith to start Kicks & Flutters and building it from the ground up. There was no guarantee that it was going to work. I was taking an idea that did not fit neatly into the traditional healthcare model and betting on myself enough to try. I started with an ultrasound machine, my experience, and a belief that there was a better way to bring ultrasound to people. Everything that Kicks & Flutters has become since then has been built one patient, one referral, one relationship, and one decision at a time.
One of the greatest compliments I receive today is when someone tells me they came specifically because they wanted me to scan them. I have had people drive hours to see me personally because they trust my skills or because someone they trust recommended me. That means more to me than I can really put into words. In ultrasound, patients are trusting you with something incredibly important, whether it is their pregnancy, a breast concern, a fertility journey, or another medical issue. Knowing that people have that level of confidence in me is something I will never take for granted.
I am also incredibly proud that Kicks & Flutters now has more than 150 Google reviews and every single one of them is five stars. Of course I am proud of the number, but what means the most to me is what those reviews represent. They are more than a rating. They are more than 150 individual people and families who trusted me with their care and felt strongly enough about their experience to tell someone else about it. For a business that has grown so heavily through word of mouth, that means everything.
I think what sets me apart is that I have never believed I have to choose between being highly skilled clinically and giving someone a genuinely good experience. Both matter. I want people to trust that I know what I am doing, but I also want them to know that when I walk through their door, they are going to be treated like a person, not an appointment.
More than a decade into my career, I still love ultrasound. I still want to get better at it. I still care deeply about the quality of my work. And somehow, I have been fortunate enough to turn all of that into a business that people now seek out specifically because they trust the person behind it.
Building Kicks & Flutters from nothing into that kind of business is, without question, what I am most proud of.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I never really considered myself a risk taker before starting Kicks & Flutters. I had spent years building a stable career in ultrasound and Maternal Fetal Medicine, so starting a business from the ground up meant leaving a lot of certainty behind and betting on myself.
Starting Kicks & Flutters has been the biggest professional risk I have ever taken. Ultrasound equipment is expensive, building a business is expensive, and there was absolutely no guarantee that people would understand the concept of at home ultrasound or that anyone would actually book. I was putting my own money, time, reputation, and career experience behind an idea I believed in.
I have learned that I am willing to take risks, but I am definitely a calculated risk taker. I research everything, ask questions, run the numbers, and probably overthink things sometimes. But eventually there comes a point when you cannot research your way into a guarantee. You have to decide whether you believe in yourself enough to take the chance.
My faith has also played a big role in that. There have been times when I could not see exactly where the business was going, but I felt strongly that I was supposed to keep going. Sometimes you do everything you can to prepare, and then you have to take the leap of faith.
Kicks & Flutters has taught me that staying comfortable can be a risk too. If I had waited until I knew it would succeed before starting, I never would have started at all. Taking that chance was scary, but it has also been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
One of my favorite sayings is “if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough”.
Pricing:
- At Home Keepsake 2D, 3D, 4D- $249-$299
- At Home Breast Ultrasound (both)-$450
- At Home Medical Pregnancy -$300-400
- At Home General, Vascular, GYN- $300-$400
- At Home NST- $299
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kicksandfluttersultrasound.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kafhomeultrasound/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KAFHomeUltrasound/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberly-fielding-rdms-rvt-rdcs-7bb77780
- Other: https://linktr.ee/kafultrasound
