How Does a Fetal Heart Monitor Work?

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If you are pregnant, what most probably bothers or interests you is the health of the child inside your womb, the child that you are about to give birth to. If you know someone who has had miscarriages and other pregnancy-related problems, perhaps you are a little more anxious to know if your child is safe, sound and healthy. Do not worry yourself too much. This is a normal behavior. Good thing, your apprehensions could now be eased and your queries will be answered through a medical invention that has been making many mothers all over the world at peace, and rescuing many children from their imminent fetal complications: the fetal heart monitor.

The baby heart monitor is actually a good tool to battle the increasing prenatal-related-sickness situations. At an early stage of your child, you can have his heart beat be checked by a medical expert or even by yourself. There are fetal heart monitors that are being sold nowadays for home use. As such, there are also fetal heart monitor rentals where you can at least lease a monitoring device.

fetal heartbeat monitorFetal heart monitors function almost similarly like the monitor that your personal doctor uses to observe baby heartbeat. This version, specifically the fetal Doppler monitor, uses ultrasound waves to determine the movement of the fetus in your tummy. These changes are then translated to sound and can also be viewed visually. It contains a calculating device that computes the heart rate and presents the measure on the screen. One pen records the altering heart rate which produces a permanent graphic record. Another pen, on the other hand, records the pattern of contraction below the heart rate on the monitor. Observing and recording contractions is crucial since the pattern of heart rate is sometimes hard to decipher, not unless of course, if you know where the contractions happen.

The normal fetal heart rate (FHR) is 120 to 160 beats per minute. Normal means the fetus is receiving enough oxygen from the bloodstream of the mother. Abnormal changes in the FHR can mean that the fetus has a low level of oxygen in the blood and tissues. This can injure the baby. Some of the patterns that you have to look for are:

  • Abnormally fast or low heart rate
  • Prolonged declaration (heart rate pattern which does not return immediately to normal after a contraction)
  • Late declaration (a heart rate pattern that decelerate behind normal schedule in the contraction and then stays low)
  • No variability (a heart rate pattern that does not reply to any contraction)

These will register on your screen or in the sound that you hear (when you are using a Doppler heart rate monitor).

The use of these monitors provides a wide array of advantage. For one, as part of prenatal care, different diseases can be controlled and predicted among unborn infants. Many “brain-damages” can be discovered and resolved by monitoring fetal heart rates. Some have even made it possible to control infants’ Coronary heart diseases. Yet although fetal heart monitors are advantageous, they also have some downsides. An example of this is when a mother is not able to track the heartbeat, she might panic. This could cause further casualty. Fetal heart monitors, actually, sometimes find it hard to determine the perfect spot to monitor the heartbeat, and this is quite normal.