diff --git a/CHANGES.md b/CHANGES.md
index 4bc9e41b..87aadce7 100644
--- a/CHANGES.md
+++ b/CHANGES.md
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
 - [pull #535] Update `_slugify` to use utf-8 encoding (issue #534)
 - [pull #536] Maintain order of appearance in footnotes
 - [pull #538] Include HTML headers in TOC
+- [pull #540] Add mechanism to prevent header ID counter resetting (issue #530)
 
 ## python-markdown2 2.4.10
 
diff --git a/lib/markdown2.py b/lib/markdown2.py
index 245197f8..368b0954 100755
--- a/lib/markdown2.py
+++ b/lib/markdown2.py
@@ -244,7 +244,8 @@ def __init__(self, html4tags=False, tab_width=4, safe_mode=None,
             if not isinstance(self.extras['header-ids'], dict):
                 self.extras['header-ids'] = {
                     'mixed': False,
-                    'prefix': self.extras['header-ids']
+                    'prefix': self.extras['header-ids'],
+                    'reset-count': True
                 }
 
         if 'break-on-newline' in self.extras:
@@ -292,7 +293,8 @@ def _setup_extras(self):
             self.footnotes = OrderedDict()
             self.footnote_ids = []
         if "header-ids" in self.extras:
-            self._count_from_header_id = defaultdict(int)
+            if not hasattr(self, '_count_from_header_id') or self.extras['header-ids'].get('reset-count', False):
+                self._count_from_header_id = defaultdict(int)
         if "metadata" in self.extras:
             self.metadata = {}