Listening to your baby’s heart rate while you’re in labour

Your midwife will listen to and monitor your baby’s heartbeat while you’re in labour.

The way we carry out this monitoring will depend on how well you are and whether you have any medical or pregnancy-related conditions.

If you are feeling well and don’t have any medical or pregnancy-related conditions, we will use a handheld machine to check your baby’s heartbeat regularly.

If we need to monitor you more closely, we will use a bigger machine to continuously record your baby’s hear trate.

We’ll check your baby’s heartbeat at least once an hour. For each check, an independent member of the team will come to review the results.

If we think you and your baby need extra support, the person looking after you will involve a senior member of our team.

We train and assess everyone who checks babies’ heartrates each year.