35: Electronic Fetal Monitoring

Electronic fetal monitoring is probably a topic that you don’t think you need to know anything about.  Knowledge is power, and knowing how this works, what your options are, and how it can impact your labor, and even the outcome of how your baby is born is powerful.  Although electronic fetal monitoring sounds pretty uninteresting it can have a bigger impact on your labor than you think, and you may have some different choices about it depending on your risk level and how you and your little one are doing during labor.  During your labor and birth your doctor of midwife will be checking the heart rate of your baby.  This is monitored because your little one’s heart rate is thought of as the best way to check their well-being during labor.  The goal of using electronic fetal monitoring is to identify babies who are short on oxygen and then identify what the underlying cause is to correct it.  Monitoring heart rate can also alert your doctor or midwife in the event an emergency arises in which the baby needs to be born immediately either via cesarean section or through an assisted birth.