Friday, November 9, 2007

A Scare with a Happy Ending: Fetal Doppler

Monday started out as one of those days that you hope you never have. We had a scheduled appointment with a specialist that we have been seeing after we lost our first pregnancy. The doctor went over all of our tests and things looked like they were going well. He then decided to use the fetal doppler to check for the baby's heart beat. He was unable to find one. I felt our hearts drop and began to think about what happened last time. Not again, I kept thinking. The doctor called the Ultrasound clinic and unable to get us in for an appointment until Wednesday. He indicated that it was still early and that he did not like to use the fetal doppler. The look on his face did not make me feel any better.

I know that waiting until Wednesday was not going to work, so we went down to the ultrasound clinic to see if we could get in any earlier. The lady at the desk said there may be a cancellation. She new what happened last time and told us that she would call us if something opened up, but could not promise anything. She did call a few hours latter and we did get in, I guess I can not complain about our health care system. I still can't believe that we got in. We went into the clinic scared and not sure what to expect. Well........ as they say a picture is worth a million words:



As you can see things worked out. The baby positioning caused us not to be able to hear the heartbeat when using the fetal doppler. We were able to hear the heartbeat during the ultrasound (music to our ears) but do to the positioning they could not determine if we are having a boy or a girl, only time will tell. Life could not be any better. What are your experiences with fetal dopplers?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't recall how far along you are. My doctor doesn't like to even try to use the doppler until 12 weeks or so, just because it can be hard to get anything, and it freaks people out if it can't be heard. They do have a primitive sonogram machine in the office, though. I think this time we couldn't get the doppler to pick up a heartbeat at my 10-week appointment, so they took a look with the sonogram and saw the hb. Luckily I didn't have to try to get in somewhere else.

Glad everything worked out for you!

Aida said...

with our first, my GP was able to find the h/b with the doppler at 10 weeks, then i went in again at 14 weeks and he cant find it. i was crying at this point. he sent me for an emergency u/s and true enough, the position of the baby made it a little harder.

with my current pregnancy, they weren't able to pick up a hb on the doppler till 15 weeks but i blame that to the left over belly (yuck) from my csection.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad you got to see and hear your LO! I know how scary it can be when they can't find the heartbeat and that sense of relief and joy when you get to see your LO moving around and hear that heart pumping. Congrats!

Anonymous said...

I am so glad things worked out for you.

I myself have gone thru that same thing. I am having a difficult pregnancy and so had to go in for an appt. (due to spotting). Well the doctor decided to use the doppler... it was not picking up a heartbeat. She said she would like to order an ultrasound right away to check on things.... after what seemed like forever I finally got an ultrasound like an hour later. The baby was doing fine, kicking, sucking it's thumb, etc. Words can not describe what I felt!

Anonymous said...

*lurker* the docs always had trouble finding my daughter's hb and obviously things worked out fine as I'm sure they will with you and your baby too...but I wound up eventually buying one of those fetal dopplers from Stork Radio which had a display showing my baby's heartrate At first it was hard to find her heartbeat myself, but a couple of days after using it I found her heartbeat every day and it was majorly comforting to me -- ironically it got to the point that a minute after I put the doppler on my belly my daughter would move over right to it and when I talked to her I could actually hear her getting excited because she would start kicking and moving around ALOT - I LOVEDDDDD mine. Was expensive to buy it outright but it was cheaper than renting it and I thought we were going to try for another but it didn't work out that way so eventually I'll just wind up selling it. Good luck!!

Rob Monroe said...

Oh my, I'm so glad that the outcome was positive. My wife had some abnormal bleeding at about week 15 and we got to have an emergency ultrasound at that point. We developed a good relationship with the UltraSound doc from that point until our little one was born.

This kind of goes back to our technology conversation on the last post....exciting but a little scary.

Our New Baby said...

We had some bleeding with our first attempt. I am assuming that things went well for you after that as you had the great relationship with the Ultra Sound Doctor. It is sure scary every time we walk in but we do a great job masking it with excitement. I sure love technology when I see the movement and hear the heartbeat.

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