What is a home doppler? It's a fetal heart monitor. Just as it sounds, these home monitors are used by mothers, and sometimes family members, to listen to the baby's heartbeat.
Fetal heart monitors are not FDA-approved and can carry some serious risks in the home:
- Patients are not trained to use a fetal heart monitor. Without proper training as a sonographer, it can be difficult to detect a baby's heartbeat. Any internal sound picked up on unsophisticated equipment by someone who is not trained on the device can sound like a heartbeat.
- Patients do not know how to recognize a dangerous change. Again, without proper training, it is not a reliable method of reading a baby's heartbeat. You may be falsely reassured by finding the baby's heartbeat, when in reality, you may not recognize a problem even if the heartbeat is found.
- Delay medical treatment. There have been cases where mothers felt something was wrong but delayed medical attention after allegedly finding their baby's heartbeat on the fetal heart monitor.
- Nothing may be heard. On the other hand, sometimes it can be hard to hear your heartbeat, and it's all too easy to convince yourself that something is wrong. Perhaps the baby is in the wrong position, is not yet big enough to hear, or there is some other reason why the fetal heart monitor is not detecting anything. But that doesn't mean something is wrong.
- Stress. Not being able to hear the baby for whatever reason can cause a lot of stress for the mother, resulting in stress for the baby. The resulting rush of hormones causes physical changes in the mother and can have deleterious effects on the developing baby.
- Questionable ultrasound waves. Doppler fetal heart monitors carry an even greater risk as they expose the baby to ultrasound waves.
El Dr. Daniel García, gynecologist and obstetrician at Ginefem, explains in this video why a doppler should not be used at home.
