How would you react to this?

[babybearsmummy]

I had my beautiful baby girl 13 and a half months ago now. It was a very quick (5hr) labour from 1st contraction to baby being born and was a very positive experience.

As it was so quick I forgot lots of it and, gradually over the last few months, have been remembering snippets. Silly things like where o.h was standing and sitting at times, what I was doing at times etc, mostly nothing too important, but it has been nice to remember things myself rather than o.h telling me what happened and not being able to remember it myself.

Anyway! I was having a moment the other day and thinking about it and realised that during the 3hours we were at the MLU, my baby's heart wasn't listened to. Even when the MW was taking my temp, blood pressure and examining me when we arrived.

Is this normal? It's put me in a state of worry as I used to be a student midwife and the midwives had to check baby's heart rate and write it in the notes every 5-10 mins during established labour.

Should I stop being PFB?

And you are worrying about this now because....

You said she's fine. Stop worrying about stupid shit and enjoy her!

Like you said you memory is foggy, you are starting to remember things that DID happen but I'm not sure how you can remember for certain what didn't happen if you only just starting to remember snippets.

Anyhow not sure what is the norm with monitoring heartbeat tbh I too have very foggy memories of my labours and although I remember some things with complete clarity I'm sure there is loads I still haven't a clue about (I still can't remember the first time I held ds2)

You really shouldn't be worrying about it now but I will say that when I was in labour they didn't check my baby's heart beat at all. I progressed quite quickly too (established labour lasted 3 hours). I reckon they'd only have checked if they were concerned or if you'd asked.
Only think about it again if you have another baby and it would make you more relaxed through your labour.

Listening intermittently (e.g. every 15min) is of questionable value - some consultants I've met say it is of no clinical value as you need to listen for a longer continuous period (e.g. for at least 20min) to monitor the heart's behaviour over time, through several contractions, to get meaningful data.

On the other hand continuous monitoring of low-risk pregnancies has been shown to have no clinical benefit, and in fact be dangerous as it increases risky interventions (both due to HCP panics over normal different rhythms and due to mothers being restricted from movement etc).

So, my default birth preference is for no monitoring. Sounds like you got that without asking which is great - no need to interfere unless indicated and desired.

Lots of midwife led units won't routinely listen in. If you ran into problems and the labour wasn't progressing well then they would certainly listen in or put you on a CTG monitor. Clearly you were progressing well so they didn't feel there was indication to.