Fetal Heart Rate

At What Point Should You be able to Hear Fetal Heart Beat

May 12, 2010

The baby’s heart will start to beat at the start of the 4th week (22nd day) after fertilization. Basically, this means that by the fifth week of impregnation, the heart is beating. During early pregnancy until week nine, the fetal heart rate will rise 3.3 bpd (bpd stands for beats per day). It tends to vary with gestational age (or the age of the baby) in the early stages of impregnation. Usual heart rate at six weeks goes from ninety to one hundred ten bpm (bpm stands for beats per minute) and at nine weeks goes from around one hundred forty to one hundred seventy beats per minute. The majority of young moms-to-be say that the fetal heart rate sounds like a horse running at full gallop.

Listening to the little one’s heart for the first time can be a special moment, one to remember for a lifetime. Even though the heart starts to beat around the fifth week of a 9 month pregnancy, you’ll not have the opportunity to in fact hear the heart beating that early. Around nine or ten weeks after the LMP (last menstrual period), it’s possible to hear the heart beating with an exceptional stethoscope also known as the Doppler. But what this instrument does? Basically, it bounces sound waves off of the little one’ heart in order to make sounds. You should know that this procedure doesn’t hurt the fetus. Listening to the heart beating in this early stage of pregnancy relies upon a couple of things. In case you’re obese, it may be difficult to listen to the heart beating.

Despite the fact that it is not possible to hear the baby’s heart until week nine or even week ten, the hand-held sound wave stethoscope can usually pick-up a heartbeat a lot sooner. It can detect heart beats as a sparkle in the chest about 4 weeks after impregnation. Every time you come to an appointment, the physician will monitor the little one’s heart. Monitoring the fetal heart rate is perhaps the simplest way to check the little one’s condition and development. The physician will check the fetal heart rate using one out of two methods. The 1st way is to count the number of heartbeats for a total of 60 seconds. The 2nd one is to count the heartbeats for only fifteen sec and multiply that number with 4. As you can notice, these methods are not complicated.

A lot of moms-to-be want to check the fetal heart rate while they are at home by themselves. There’re a lot of producers of instruments which can be used for this purpose. However, keep in mind that they are very expensive. In case you wish nothing but the best for your baby you will have to pay around $600 for one such instrument. On the other hand, cheaper models are not as effective and, most importantly, they can make you worry for nothing. Sometimes an instrument may not detect the heartbeat of a healthy fetus or you can misinterpret the sounds you are hearing.

Filed under: Interpretation

Tags: Fetal Heart Rate, fetal heart rate at 5 weeks, fetal heart rate at 6 weeks, fetal heart rate at 9 weeks