A Baby Heart Monitor, aka Fetal Doppler, is used to listen to the heartbeat of a child during prenatal checks.  They are usually hand-held ultrasonic devices and some enable you to hear your baby’s heart beat from as early as 8-12 weeks into pregnancy. Being able to monitor the baby’s heart at this early stage can cut down on a lot of stress and helps assure that the developing foetus is healthy. Some of these ultrasonic dopplers only produce the audio of the fetal heart rate (FHR) while others provide an LCD display of the FHR in beats per minute (bpm).

Most baby heart monitors come equipped with either a 2 or 3 MHz probe. The 2 MHz dopplers tend to pick up the baby heart beat earlier than those designed at 3 MHz. This is because the lower the frequency, the farther the sound travels.

To use a typical ultrasonic Fetal Doppler, you will normal apply Ultrasound Gel on your pregnancy bump. Then place the probe (which is connected to the foetal Doppler device) upon the bump and angle it around gently until you hear a strong baby’s heart beat signal. With the LCD–type dopplers, you will also see a digital display in Bpm.

There is no reason to feel uncomfortable about the use of ultrasound dopplers during pregnancy. Most studies on the safety of ultrasonic fetal monitoring have proved that using ultrasounic diagnostics during pregnancy does not cause any harm to mother or foetus.

Rather the ability for expectant mothers to listen to the baby’s heartbeat at home offers a safe method of early fetal bonding which was previously only available at antenatal appointments with a medical professional. With its approval for use at home by the FDA, expecting mothers have increasingly been opting to buy foetal  heart  monitors to help relieve some of the stress associated with the unknowns of early and late pregnancy.