16 week appointment - could not find heartbeat?

[swivel34]

I went for my 16 week midwife appointment and asked to hear babies heartbeat. My midwife was reluctant and said it was too early, but tried - and could not find the heartbeat! She said she could hear baby moving around and not to worry, she was not concerned at all.

However this panicked me. I rang the hospital and they also just told me not to worry and it's their policy to not do this before 22 weeks for this exact reason.

But I am worried. Has this happened to anybody else?

They were fine finding one at 16 weeks for me but really struggled at 22! We could hear the baby kicking the Doppler 😂 and I could feel them wiggling around so I was pretty confident it was okay.

The student couldn’t find it at all and it took the midwife close to 10 minutes. I have an anterior placenta which made it harder as they kept picking up the placenta rather than baby.

I’m quite skinny so it isn’t just down to weight!

I had a private scan at 16 weeks because I wanted to know if I was having a boy or a girl - if you can afford one I would highly recommend it. Hope all is well and please try not to worry over the heartbeat. I've got an anterior placenta and it took ages for them to find it when I was well past 16 weeks. In fact I didn't even have a 16 week appointment!

It’s perfectly normal try not to worry, personal experience for me is that we never got a heartbeat before 20 weeks in four pregnancies.

In fact in my youngest we struggled to find one the entire duration! He was just squirmy and positioned badly.

I wouldn’t worry. As someone else mentioned, if you’re a larger person, it can be hard when baby is still so tiny. Equally, it can be positional that they don’t find it straight away when baby is bigger. Some people are lucky and hear it very early on with a Doppler, others don’t. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything sinister at this stage. If anything changes with you, of course ring EPAU or your midwifery assessment unit (in our hospital it’s EPAU until 18 weeks).

Yes this is why they don't routinely look for heartbeat at appointments until later...

My midwife took aaaaages to find the heartbeat at 16 weeks. She eventually found it, but I’m under a specialist midwife team who come to visit me at home, and she did say a normal midwife at a regular appointment would have given up. She said she would have sent me for a scan though so it does seem to be different in different areas!

My midwife offered to listen to the heartbeat at my 16 week scan which I was very surprised about because I thought they didn’t do it anymore, because it’s very common not to be able to find it.

At mine, as soon as she put the Doppler on we heard it for about 1 second and then the baby moved and she spent about 5 minutes searching for it and couldn’t find it again. They are hard to find.

I’d had a 16 week scan to find out the sex a few days before so wasn’t too worried, but can see how it would be very worrying.

With my first pregnancy I had a 16 week scan too which was very reassuring because I found out my placenta was at the front (anterior) which means movements are harder to feel. That was good to know so I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t feeling them.

Thank you everyone. I felt my first swoosh this morning, followed by some light tapping, so I think everything is okay!

Good news @swivel34, hope you are reassured now.

Don’t worry I had my 16 week appt on Monday of this week and the midwife said they don’t attempt to listen for Heartbeat this early as baby is still so small it’s hard to locate. We had a private scan last Friday and heard it then xx

This is why many trusts refuse to offer this until after 20 weeks, they're still very small and hard to locate in there, don't worry 😁

That’s very exciting! ☺️