What is internal fetal heart-rate monitoring?
Internal fetal heart-rate monitoring is the most precise method of evaluating a baby’s heart rate during labor. This type of continuous assessment makes sense if it’s difficult to hear the heart rate externally, or if the heart rate pattern they are seeing isnt reassuring. Accuracy is the main advantage to internal fetal heart-rate monitoring, but there’s a side benefit as well: You can move around more easily in bed with this type of monitor, so you may be more comfortable than if you were bound by the abdominal belts of an external fetal monitor. How does the internal monitor work? The monitor uses a thin wire to transmit electrical signals from your baby’s heart, allowing the heartbeat to be followed moment by moment. (In essence, it produces a fetal electrocardiogram, or EKG.) The heart rate is tracked on a graph, either on paper or in a computer, sometimes both. Usually a visual record of the contractions is kept simultaneously, and the graph can help to see how the baby responds
