Collection: Home Doppler

Home Doppler

Using a home doppler is a wonderful way to connect with your baby during pregnancy. It amplifies your baby’s heartbeat using gentle ultrasound signal technology, allowing you to hear the heartbeat of your child in real-time.

At BabyHeart, we offer a range of medical-grade heart dopplers to suit your needs and budget, so you can check in on your bub and hear their sounds of joy comfortably at home or with ease on the run.

Our mini doppler is perfect for parents on the move. Lightweight and compact, it sits comfortably in the palm of your hand and fits easily into a small handbag or as a pocket fetal doppler. It’s also completely wireless, operating on a 9V battery – so you can use it anywhere, anytime. Best of all, it offers a double channel audio socket – so you can plug in two sets of headphones and share your baby’s heartbeat with your nearest and dearest.

If you’d like a more in-depth representation of your baby’s heartbeat, we recommend our standard, advanced, and premium fetal heartbeat doppler products. Both our standard and advanced at-home fetal dopplers let you see your baby’s heart rate reflecting numerically on an easy-to-use LCD. Both also offer multimodal analysis of your bub’s heartbeat, so you can hear it in real-time using headphones or the built-in speaker, as well as understand things like the average fetal heart rate.

At the top of the range, our rechargeable premium doppler offers a brilliant LCD that visualises your baby’s fetal heart rate in waveform, so you can see and hear every peak and lull in their heart rhythm – all in real-time.

Every BabyHeart pregnancy heartbeat monitor is entered in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG registration no. 277143), so you know you’re purchasing a high-quality fetal heart rate monitor that is safe to use.

How accurate are home dopplers?

Every home doppler is different. Ultimately, the quality of ultrasound technology and the strength of power or battery supply in a home doppler is what determines how early – and how accurately – you can hear your baby’s heartbeat.

Our premium doppler amplifies your bub’s heart rate from approximately 12 weeks. It does this at less than 50% of the industry standard ultrasound dosage, which has made it an incredibly popular choice for midwives, obstetricians, and parents.

Our other dopplers, such as the advanced and standard dopplers, also recognise fetal heart rates from 12 weeks onwards. As an audio-only device, our fetal doppler is generally most effective when used in the third trimester of pregnancy.

Several things can impact what you hear on your heart fetal doppler, which aren’t just related to the age of development of your baby. Sometimes, it may be difficult to hear your baby’s heartbeat due to the baby’s positioning inside the womb. Other issues can include inconsistent gel application or an operator error. It’s important to remember that using a heartbeat doppler should never replace proper medical examination. If you have concerns about your baby’s heartbeat or cannot feel them moving as expected or like they usually would, don’t panic – rather, seek emergency assistance from your medical professional.

How to use a home doppler during pregnancy?

Using a home doppler during pregnancy is super simple!

Before you do anything else, it’s important to do a spot test with the ultrasound gel. This is to ensure you don’t suffer an allergic reaction that could impact you or your baby. To do a spot test, dab a small amount of the doppler gel on an unobtrusive patch of skin, such as under your chin or behind your ears. That way, if you do have a reaction, it’s concealed. If your skin remains clear after leaving the gel for 24 hours, and you haven’t experienced an adverse reaction, you can use your home doppler with the gel.

Keep the following in mind when using your prenatal heartbeat monitor with the probe:

1. Ensure it is fully charged or has the appropriate batteries safely inserted.
2. Recline in a comfortable position.
3. Roll up your shirt and lower your pants or skirt so that your entire abdomen is uncovered.
4. Apply some of the provided ultrasound transmission gel to your lower belly, covering from beneath your belly button to your pelvic bone, between the hips. Handy hint: all BabyHeart at-home fetal doppler machines come with the necessary gel, with replacement bottles also available at our online store if you run out.
5. Turn your heartbeat doppler on and place the probe firmly but gently against your lower belly. Move the device around until you can identify the fetal heart rate.

If you’re using our mini doppler, follow the above instructions but place the whole device against your abdomen instead of the probe.

Remember: the home doppler will also pick up your heartbeat and artery flow. Your baby’s heartbeat will be much faster than these. If you’re uncertain, ask your nurse or doctor at your next scheduled pregnancy appointment to help you identify the difference.

When should you use a home doppler?

It’s important to make sure that your use of a fetal doppler at home should occur in parallel with your regular doctor, ob-gyn, or midwife appointments. This is to ensure that your baby’s development is being monitored appropriately and reassurance is provided from a medically-informed perspective.

Outside of these appointments, you can use your baby heart monitor to bond with your baby. For best practice, try using your new doppler machine with your midwife or medical provider present, so you know exactly what to listen for.