Reassurance

I had my 16 week checkup at the doctors last week (17 weeks 3 days) and they didn’t check heartbeat or anything, just asked me a couple of questions and checked my blood pressure. Just wondering if this is normal? I also bought a Doppler fetal heart monitor myself online just to give myself some peace of mind because the time between scans is so long! First pregnancy I’ve made it this far and have been really worried something is going to go wrong but when I explained that to my midwife I was told ‘just take a test every week between scans and as long as it keeps coming back positive, stop worrying’ like it’s that easy!

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Yes. They don’t check anymore as baby is so small they may not always find it and cause us unnecessary stress xx

Thank you so much! I’ve been so nervous about it all so it’s nice to get that confirmation and have the pressure lifted x

Normal now for a 16 week not to check, some will do it if you ask but as said above if they can't find it I think they have to send you for a scan or monitoring and it can cause stress and usually everything is okay! I would say be careful having your own doppler, they don't really recommend you use them, it can be hard to find heartbeat and sometimes you can pick up your own instead etc. If I'm unsure I usually just keep testing as your midwife said or for me I check my nipples because they have been painful since day 1 this time around 🤣. I was like you on the first and wanted my own doppler too but my husband talked me out of it as he knows I would obsess with it 🤣

I had it done without asking, they offered it, however it’s probably a small percentage of places that do, due to the chance you won’t be able to hear x

Interesting about the keep testing advice, never heard that this late in pregnancy. I would imagine if something were to happen at this stage you would have symptoms before your hormones would clear out so much as to stop showing up on an urine test. You won’t just stop being pregnant all of a sudden. Those tests pick up pregnancies at 4-5 weeks, your hormones now are levels of magnitude higher regardless if the baby is still ok or not. When people have missed miscarriages ( no symptoms) they have to continue testing for weeks after all tissue removal to make sure they eventually get to that negative pregnancy test. Hopefully this doesn’t sound scary or negative, I’m actually in the same boat and hate not being able to tell how the baby is doing, I’m just confused based on what I previously read on how pregnancy hormones work and what home tests can detect. The home doppler seems like what you want at this stage, the baby should sit pretty low so look for him there 😋.

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