Monitoring your baby

During labour, your midwife will listen to your baby’s heartbeat to check his/her wellbeing, and to ensure he/she is coping well with labour. There are three different ways your midwife can check this, by using either:

• a hand-held machine
• a pinard stethoscope; or
• continuous electronic fetal monitoring.

If you have had a normal and healthy pregnancy, and your labour started naturally after 37 weeks, you will normally be offered monitoring using a small-hand held machine which produces the sound of your baby’s heartbeat. This is the same machine that your midwife/doctor used to listen to your baby’s heartbeat during pregnancy. Your midwife will listen to your baby’s heartbeat intermittently and regularly throughout labour. Your midwife may choose to listen to your baby’s heartbeat with a pinard stethoscope. Like a traditional stethoscope you will not be able to hear the heartbeat but the midwife will hear it clearly. Continuous electronic fetal monitoring (sometimes called a CTG) is a machine which is used to record your baby’s heartbeat and the contractions of your womb constantly throughout labour. It may be recommended that you have this type of monitoring if you’ve had any complications during pregnancy or labour. Midwives and/or doctors will look at this recording regularly throughout labour. You will need to wear two belts around your abdomen to keep the monitors in place. In some units a wireless machine may be available (this is known as telemetry), which means you may be able to move around more freely. Additional monitoring may be recommended if your midwives or doctors are concerned about your baby’s heartbeat during labour, this could be either:

• a fetal scalp electrode (FSE) which is attached directly to your baby’s head
• a fetal blood sample (FBS), this test involves checking your baby’s oxygen levels by taking a small sample of blood from your baby’s head.