How Does the Fetal Heart Rate Monitor Work?
The fetal heart rate monitor is simply an electronic box that monitors to measure the fetal heart rate and contractions of the uterus. It counts the fetus’ heartbeats and prints them out on a rolling sheet of paper, and displays the rate on a screen. A monitor allows doctors and nurses to distinguish between the “lub” and the “dub” beats of the fetus’ heart so that a beat isn’t counted twice. A very slow heart rate may fool the monitor into detecting a false heart rate. However, this is extremely rare. Each fetal monitor screen has two channels. The top channel displays the fetal heart rate and the bottom channel displays the uterine contractions. Correlating the changes in the fetus’ heart rate with the timing of the uterine contractions is more informative to the doctor or nurse than following the heart rate alone. There are two basic types of monitoring devices: external and internal fetal heart rate monitors.
