fetal heartbeat

[pandorak]

Can a fetal heartbeat be heard at 9 weeks?

[enigma]

The baby's heartbeat is normally heard around the four month mark of your pregnancy when your midwife will check it for you but you can buy hand held equipment which claim that you can hear the baby's heartbeat from 10 weeks (UK) or 8 weeks (US). I'm a bit sceptical about the reliability of these home devices as it can be tricky sometimes for even the most skilled health professional to find the baby's heartbeat due to certain factors ie position the baby is lying in , size of baby. A tiny foetus will be hard to detect if you don't know how to gauge the size of the growing uterus in accordance to how big the baby is. They are not cheap either , the starting price is around �70. In theory it is possible but trying to actually find the heartbeat may be hit and miss.

[Mazzini]

I can't remember exactly when I first heard the heartbeat but it was before the midwife was even listening for it.

I bought one of the home units last year when I was expecting and after a period of misinterpreting my own heartbeat for that of my little darling's heart I became quite a dab hand at finding it, so much so that at checkups with the consultant or midwife I would be showing them where to monitor as they could never find baby on their own! My unit seemed more reliable than theirs alot of the time. My unit was quite a bit more than �70 but as I hope to have another baby one day I felt it was worth it. You can hire them too which cuts the cost down but still allows you to use a good quality unit. By the way, one minor downside of having one of these doppler things is for a few days you get obsessed with listening to the poor little blighter and over-worry yourself if you can't immediately find the heart beat but you'll get over that quickly hopefully. Girl and boy heart rates are slightly different in the womb so I read and I had a good idea I was expecting a boy long before any scans.

I had a big fat belly to start with and so my doppler machine had to go through extra depth searching for a beat!! If you are reasonably slim to start with you might get an earlier detection - just a thought?

[The Tiggster]

We had a scan carried out at 9 weeks +6 days & the fetal heartbeat could be detected then.

see here heartbeat

[dmj]

I had early scans with both my pregnancys and althought you can see the heart beating at 9 weeks I dont think you would be able to hear it

[Didyman]

The fetal heartbeat can usually be heard at 5 months onwards unless you happen to have access to an Ultrasound Doppler. If you have a suitable device your baby's heartbeat will be between 120 and 160 beats per minute and may sound more "whoosh" than "thud".

You'll get best results if your baby is laying with it's back to your belly button.