Anyone brought their own sonic aid?? Would welcome a midwives oppinion

[quietlycautious]

I have just found out I'm pregnant after suffering a miscarriage earlier this year and I've been thinking about buying my own doppler/fetal heartrate moniter - or whatever other names they go by.

I was just wondering if anyone else had brought one or what the guidlines are for using them - I'm slightly worried about the frequency waves causing damage.

Would be really grateful for any advice/recommendations!!!

i'm a student midwife and i know from experience that it is near on impossible to find the fetal heartbeat with a sonicaid before 12 weeks, depending on the build of mum it can be as late as 16 wks before you get a good clear heartbeat.(with the sonicaid)
so this can sometimes cause unnecessary worry for the mum when she can't find the heartbeat.
i would have a word with your midwife/gp/consultant, they can arrange extra scans, appointments etc to mointor the baby, some consultants will even arrange loans of sonicaids to mums with previous history.
if you do decide to buy one it might be worth looking on ebay as i have seen them on there for around £70 whereas the ones you buy from medical suppliers are around £300.

thanks for the advice vicki - I know it is unusual to hear the heartbeat before 12 weeks but my miscarriage was a late one and so hearing the heartbeat even at 16-20 weeks would be comforting to me.

I will have a word with my mw when I see her

Thanks again

quietlycautious... there have been a few other threads on this and I think overall the advice is that it will cause you even more worry!

as vicki already said, the heartbeat can be hard to find and you may worry yourself needlessly by not hearing it, or hearing things that you don't recognise.

for example, I remember someone posting because they were worried they could hear cord noises near the baby's head and thought it was round the neck..

Your midwife will be able to check the heartbeat every time you see her... so I would just make sure you have regular checks with her.

We bought a doppler because the midwife wouldn't look for the heartbeat before 12 weeks in case "it worried me". The fact that I was worried sick about losing the pregnancy anyway was irrelevant apparently. We went straight to ebay and found a company selling them new for £158. It's brilliant. Picked the heartbeat up ourselves at about 10 weeks. Ok, we haven't used it that much overall but it was very reassuring to know that any time of the day or night, we had the technology. It did help us too when I was very ill and didn't feel the baby move for 2 days. We will sell it on ebay after the baby is born I expect.

I bought one, at a cost of about £70, 7 years ago, and wished I hasn't wasted my money. We had fertility treatment, and I was terrified I would m/c, so bought one for a bit of reassurance - but could never find the heartbeat, which frightened the living daylights out of me everytime I tried.
I can understand your fears, but I'm not sure they would necessarily be allayed by a monitor - although I know that others on this thread have had more joy with them.