Doplers - good or bad?

[ez84]

Hi All,

Since my little scare over the weekend and my previous pregnancy ending in miscarriage i have been wondering about doplers...

Has anyone heard anyting bad about them?
I heard that they cannot be used till twelve weeks, i wonder is it worth spending the money?
I would think it would be great peace of mind.
I havent decided to go out an buy one yet, too early for me yet anyway, but wondered what everyones thoughts are and if anyone has used one at home and thinks they're great?

Thanks!
Erin

[briggsy's girl]

i have one and love it - makes it easier for DH to feel involved - he takes it as his "job" to find Gremlin's heartbeat every few days. i am getting kicked now and he feels it from the outside, but it's more tangible

we couldn't regularly find HB til around 14 weeks, maybe a bit later, and if you're prone to stress, i tmight actually make things worse for you if you can't find it - so bear that in mind!

[MrsB26]

I hired one for around $40/month and i found it to be very reassuring. I had a previous history of m/c and it did wonders for my piece of mind. from what i remember i hired mine at 14 weeks an could hear the h/b straight away. Although i first felt baby kick at 17weeks i still kept it until about 26 weeks as it was also good for those quiet days that bub has when you dont feel them move all that much.
Wishing you a very sticky pregnancy.

[Inanna]

Dopplers can do your head in or they can be helpful. A baby's heart begins to beat at about 6weeks and 2 days. But due to the tiny size a doppler cannot be relied upon to hear a baby's heartbeat until around 18-20 weeks. Yes, I have heard my baby's heartbeats on doppler at around 14 weeks but I have also experienced an inability to find a heartbeat by a midwife that early too.

So, my professional opinion is that they are a bad idea - simply because you may or may not find the heartbeat. However, many women report a sense of comfort when they can find a heartbeat at home.

[Maruschke]

Finding the heartbeat can also be hard (even for the doctor!) depending on where your placenta is. My placenta is at the front (anterior) and the doctor still had trouble finding it at 20 weeks with his doppler (and when he did find it, it was feint).

I hope you have better luck though!

[Possums]

good thread...I have been wondering about this too

[AJC]

I considered getting one but I didn't as I was worried that I would have trouble finding the heartbeat and that would stress me out even more. Saying that, I can see the advantage if you don't have any troubles with it finding heartbeat but it just personally wasn't for me. Good luck!

[ez84]

thanks for everyones thoughts, i guess i have a while to go till it will even work for me as i am only five weeks, will think about it some more i guess...
i would love it for the reassuance bit if i could not find a heart beat i would probably stress, and i guess i would want it more now whilst the risk seems to be greater? and it's not going to work now...

anyway thanks again guys !

[Toomanytoomany]

There are pros and cons.

Pros - you can hear your baby's heartbeat whenever you want, which gives you peace of mind. This is a huge pro, I know, especially when you've had a previous loss. It might help you avoid unnecessary trips to the maternity ward or your doctor for reassurance. Your family can join in the pregnancy more actively by hearing the baby. Towards the end of the pregnancy you may be able to judge when the baby is engaged, because the heart is positioned lower.

Cons - the results of overexposure to the doppler's frequencies has not been established, and outside of clinical necessity, I'd be leery of that.

You aren't qualified to interpret the results - on hearing a heartbeat you may assume all is well, but there are variations that need to be considered, and particularly if there is a lack of foetal movement, there may still be good reason to consult your physician.

You may not learn to relax and enjoy the pregnancy - there is a risk that you can only be satisfied everything is okay when an external test can prove it to you. I believe this is a risk for women who are being subtly pushed away from an attitude of seeing birth as a natural and healthy process.

You may end up with even more stress if your baby's heartbeat is difficult to find due to an anterior placenta.

I think there is a lot to be said for learning thinking and relaxation techniques to help deal with the inevitable stress and anxiety of pregnancy, and I think this has overall benefits, and I do see the doppler as a bit of a bandaid measure rather than dealing with the underlying causes of the anxiety. That said, having suffered pregnancy loss myself I can well understand the temptation of having something like that on hand.

[luscious Laura]

I personally think getting a doppler is a bad bad idea. If you are really keen to hear heartbeats etc, you could look into getting a stethoscope perhaps. You can get them online fairly cheaply. They won't harm your babe or yourself. PLUS the sound is really different and much cooler, in my opinion.

Anyway, there is heaps of info available discussing the dangers of not just ultrasounds, but also hand held dopplers (more so actually)

Here are some articles that might be of interest.

E-News 8:2 - Prenatal Ultrasound
E-News 8:2 - Prenatal Ultrasound

Prenatal Ultrasound

It is ironic that women who have had previous miscarriages often have additional ultrasound examinations in order to "reassure" them that their baby is developing properly. Few are told of the risks of miscarriage or premature labour or birth.

Obstetricians in Michigan studied fifty-seven women who were at risk of giving birth prematurely. Half were given a weekly ultrasound examination; the rest had pelvic examinations. Preterm labour was more than doubled in the ultrasound group?52%?compared with 25% in the controls.(1) Although the numbers were small, the difference was unlikely to have emerged by chance.

A large randomized controlled trial from Helsinki randomly divided more than 9,000 women into a group who were scanned at 16 to 20 weeks compared with those who were not. It revealed 20 miscarriages after 16 to 20 weeks in the screened group and none in the controls.(2)

A later study in London randomized 2475 women to routine Doppler ultrasound examination of the umbilical and uterine arteries at 19 to 22 weeks and 32 weeks compared with women who received standard care without Doppler ultrasound. There were 16 perinatal deaths of normally formed infants in the Doppler group compared with 4 in the standard care group.

It is not only pregnant patients who are at risk, however. Physiotherapists use ultrasound to treat a number of conditions. A study done in Helsinki found that if the physiotherapist was pregnant, handling ultrasound equipment for at least 20 hours a week significantly increased the risk of spontaneous abortion.(3)

The Saari-Kemppainen study also revealed the lack of value in early diagnosis of placenta praevia. Of the 4000 women who were scanned at 16 to 20 weeks, 250 were diagnosed as having placenta praevia. When it came to delivery, there were only four. Interestingly, in the unscanned group there were also four women found at delivery to have this condition. All the women were given caesarean sections and there was no difference in outcomes between the babies. Indeed, there are no studies that demonstrate that early detection of placenta praevia improves the outcome for either the mother or the baby. The researchers did not investigate the possible effects on the 246 women who presumably spent their pregnancies worrying about having to undergo a caesarean section and the possibility of a sudden haemorrhage.

There has been inadequate research into the potential long-term effects. Measuring the outcome of any intervention in pregnancy is very complicated because there are so many things to look at. Intelligence, personality, growth, sight, hearing, susceptibility to infection, allergies and subsequent fertility are but a few issues that, if affected, could have serious long-term implications, quite apart from the numbers of babies who have a false positive or false negative diagnosis. Because a baby grows rapidly, exposing it to ultrasound at eight weeks can have different effects than exposure at, for example, 10, 18, or 24 weeks. This is one of the reasons the effects of potential exposure are so difficult to study. Women are now exposed to so many different types of ultrasound: Doppler scans, real-time imaging, triple scans, external fetal heart-rate monitors, hand-held fetal monitors. Unlike drugs, whereby every new drug must be tested, the rapid development of each new variation of ultrasound machine has not been accompanied by similar careful evaluation by controlled, large-scale trials.

Despite decades of ultrasonic investigation, no one can demonstrate whether ultrasound exposure has an adverse effect at a particular gestation, whether the effects are cumulative or whether it is related to the output of a particular machine or the length of the examination. How many exposures are too many? What is the mechanism by which growth is affected? ? It should not be forgotten that numerous studies on rats, mice and monkeys over the years have found reduced fetal weight in babies that had ultrasound in the womb compared with controls. Nor should it be forgotten that in the monkey studies the ultrasound babies sat or lay around the bottom of the cage, whereas the little control monkeys were up to the usual monkey tricks. Long-term follow up of the monkeys has not been reported. Do they reproduce as successfully as the controls? And, as Jean Robinson has noted, "Monkeys do not learn to read, write, multiply, sing opera, or play the violin." Human children do, and perhaps we should consider seriously whether the huge increases in children with dyslexia and learning difficulties are a direct result of ultrasound exposure in the womb. Furthermore, when a woman is scanned her baby's ovaries are also scanned. So if the woman had seven scans during her pregnancy, when her pregnant daughter eventually presents years later at the antenatal clinic, her developing baby will already have had seven scans. Do women really know what they consent to when they rush to hospital to have their first ultrasound scan, then trustingly agree to further scans?

? Beverley Lawrence Beech
excerpted from "Ultrasound: Weighing the Propaganda Against the Facts,"
Midwifery Today Issue 51

and Dr Sarah J Buckley has a great article also

Ultrasound Scans- cause for concern

There is also a really lovely article written by Emma Lewis... the article is called 'Heart beats or heart messages'. It was Published in The Mother magazine Issue 16 Winter 2005/2006, Sorry I can't find a link for you.... but I can cut and paste it for you if you want. It has some interesting thoughts about why we are so keen to check up on my babes rather than just trusting in our bodies.... and also some info about how doppler use and scans can cause silent bleeds which are of even more concern if you are a Rh negative blood type.

hope these help you come to a peaceful decision.

[Toomanytoomany]

Thank you for that information, Laura.

[Evie76]

Sounds like a stressful implement.

[MummyNaomi]

Erin, I bought an angel sounds doppler from ebay for about $35 - you use it with a bit of baby oil to conduct the sound, we heard babies heart beat from about 11 weeks and always find the heartbeat pretty easy, but thats just my experience.

I've found it reassuring as we have an IVF pregnancy and I worry alot, but I only use it about once a week as now I can feel bubs moving about. I did um and arr about buying it was was worried it wouldn't always pick up the heartbeat and I'd worry more, but for us this hasn't been an issue.

The angel sounds one also allows you to plug it into your PC microphone outlet and then you can record the heartbeat to send to family or friends etc, which is pretty cool

Its one of my best buys since pregnant

Hope this helps
Naomi

[ClareBear28]

I have hired one from First Beats for $40 a month - it is reassuring to be able to hear bubs' hb especially because I lost my first bub at 8 weeks, but the hardest part is not using it all of the time! I quizzed my midwife about the safety of them, and she said that nothing has been proven in terms of them being unsafe, but she wouldn't recommend using it more than once a week (if that). I have also found that even at nearly 18 weeks, I don't always find bubs' hb straight away - so if you are a born 'stresser' like I am, you need to be able to stay calm and not freak out if bubs' is hiding

[luscious Laura]

I quizzed my midwife about the safety of them, and she said that nothing has been proven in terms of them being unsafe,

hmmmm that's what they said about cigarettes too.

You can purchase beautiful pinard stethoscopes online (just google)....then you can listen to your belly baBe all day long and not cause any damage at all!! Pinard Stethoscope

[Toomanytoomany]

hmmmm that's what they said about cigarettes too.

And personally I prefer the cautionary approach - expecting things to be proven safe, rather than being happy with them not yet having been proven otherwise!

[ez84]

thanks again everyone for their thoughts. thankyou too laura for all your info and links,
i have googled Pinard Stethoscope and will certainly keep in mind both my options, now that i hve two, i never even thought of a Stethoscope ! i'm still undecided, i certainly don't want to harm my baby, but to be reassured every now and then would be nice, at the moment i am going off how sore my boobs are, lol. if they're sore i am VERY happy if they are not i am a little worried ! lol
thanks again all !

[ClareBear28]

hmmmm that's what they said about cigarettes too.

Bit rough comparing the history of cigarettes to a doppler, but each to his own I suppose. I don't feel that I am putting my child at risk by using it, after losing my last bub it's the last thing that I would do. Many others on BB have used them in previous pregnancies and are using them again now - but once again each to his own