Fetal Heart Monitoring is an important part of prenatal care, as it can help to inform you and your Practitioner about any possible pregnancy complications. And many pregnant mums find that nothing is more exciting than hearing their baby’s heart beat for the first time!

Typically, an expectant mother goes in for a check-up once every month, and the baby’s image is displayed on a screen, while the delighted parents listen to the fetal heart beat. Nowadays, you can listen to your baby’s heartbeat at home, using portable ultrasonic home Fetal Doppler baby heart rate monitors.

At about 8 weeks or more into pregnancy, you can start to hear you baby’s heart beat with a fetal Doppler right at the comfort and privacy of your home. The baby’s heartbeat is usually between 120 and 170 beats per minute (BPM), much faster than the mother’s heart rate.

Fetal dopplers are based on ultrasonic technology and are safe to use at home, without the help of your OP. However, it is generally advisable to use fetal Doppler which meet the BS or CE or ISO 9001 or FDA standards.  Furthermore, you don’t need to monitor the baby’s heart beat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Moderation is the best policy for everything in life.

The AngelSound Fetal Dopplers represent good value for money. They are very easy to use, offer excellent sound quality, and conform to safety standards. You can hear the baby’s heartbeat from 10-12 weeks into pregnancy and can also record the sound to tapes/computers for email and storage. They are the best selling home Fetal Doppler heart beat monitors amongst mothers in the UK. 

16 out of 16 mothers who reviewed the JPD100S PINK ANGELSOUNDS FETAL DOPPLER in Amazon awarded this product a five-star rating.

The ANGELSOUNDS GREEN FETAL DOPPLER is also highly rated.

The video below shows the New Orange Angelsounds Fetal Doppler Baby HeartBeat Monitor being use by an expectant mother.

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.