Has your Dr or Midwife ever had trouble finding fetal heartbeat with a Doppler?
I saw my GP yesterday as I had fallen on my holidays and hurt my ankle, he offered to listen to check baby as my next midwife appointment is not until next week. He had trouble finding the heartbeat and had to get another Dr to do it - I don’t think he was particularly experienced and until the other Dr found it I was terrified (esp as I had felt no movements for a couple of days!!)
has this ever happened to anyone else or was it just his lack of experience?
(I am 19 weeks pregnant btw!)
The other Dr found it straight away in EXACTLY the same place he had at my last antenatal check with him a few weeks before!! The other Dr scared the hell out of me, I almost chewed off my own arm!!
Filed under: Fetal Doppler FAQs
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The baby is so small and it can be difficult, lack of experience also.Don’t worry about it.
Yes that has happened to me! It scared the crap out of me. Babies that are under 28 weeks can be very hard to find sometimes.
yes! i was sent straight to the hospital.. only to be told that the baby was breach and that was why there was a problem listening to the heart beat….
no
yes 22wks baby was up hiding in my ribs.
a scan the next day showed it he was ledged and needed a push to help him back down.
painfull!!!!!!!
my grandson would move away from the doc everytime she put that thing to listen to him.She ordered a Sonagram just to make sure he was ok.He was fine just didn’t like that mean doctor lady.
Yeah. It was just his lack of experience.
Don’t worry! 
(Pregnant women fall all the time - especially in the later months because the baby presses on the sciatic nerve.)
Not at 19 weeks, but it could be that the baby was not positioned properly for them to detect a heartbeat. I only had trouble once, and it was earlier on (around 13 wks), so the doctor just looked at the heartbeat through u/s.
only when I was like 12 weeks by 18 weeks I knew what I was having and she has a strong heart beat i’m now 33 weeks
This has happened to me, the midwife said it was cause baby had his back facing in rather than out all his limbs were at the front of my belly so picking up a heart beat was tricky. GP’s are crap with ante natal stuff they get no practice because midwifes do it all.
Yes…the ‘teens’ of pregnancy are notorious for this. It’s more common around the 13-16 week mark, but it’s normal. At this stage, the uterus is growing rapidly to make room for baby, but baby’s still relatively small.
Yes, I had a nurse do the same thing. It was terrifying. I also noticed that whenever anyone put a doppler near my belly, my baby would aggressively move away from it. I ended up switching to a midwife that did not use Doppler– she used a fetal stethoscope to hear the baby’s heartbeat.
I never heard my second babies heartbeat until 13 weeks pregnant. Scared the heck out of me too
That happend to me at about 18 weeks. The doctor couldnt find the heartbeat. It took her arould 20 min.
Until I was about 22 weeks pregnant, it was a bit of a struggle to find it, mainly because my little one used to flee from the doppler! THey would press the pen into part of my stomach, catch a split second of heartbeat before he ran away! Later on, he became less polite and started to kick the pen!
Don’t worry, it’s often difficult to find the heartbeat initially - if you think about it, your baby is a tiny thing in water, so it’s pretty easy for him to escape when he’s smaller…
they did that to me when i was 13 weeks… no one could find a heartbeat so they did an ultrasound to see if they could find it… come to find out they werent putting the doppler in the right spot… they thought i was further along then i really was and were putting it too high… i was so freaking nervous and scared i wanted to pee myself… lol… good luck to you!!
What a horrible thing to happen! The doctor shouldn’t have offered to do this if he knew he didn’t have the experience to reliably find a hear beat that early in pregnancy.
My daughter didn’t used to move away from the Doppler, she used to punch or kick it LOL! That’s my girl!
oh god yes but it wasnt a doctor it was my bloody midwife that couldnt find it then told me not to worrie how could you not it worried me so much i went to the docs a few days later and he found it straite away and like you it was the same place she was lookin tc xx
lol
poor you sounds so unprofessional and unnerving
my doctor did it to me at 12weeks sat tryin to get a heartbeat for 5 mins got worried wen e cudnt hear a thing and then sed
"whoops, i forgot you were only 12weeks"
i could have strangled him with the wire on the doppler
Your baby moves- and it is still pretty tiny. One person may not be able to find the heart beat and 2 seconds later someone else can come in and by this time your baby has flipped back over- and they find it straight away~!