Road test: Bellabeat baby monitoring system
Don't miss a heartbeat
Pregnancy is one of the most exciting times of a woman's life, but also one of the most anxious, especially for first-time mothers. I was fortunate to skip all the unpleasant side effects, but I wasn't sure if my body was doing what it needed to do to sustain the beginnings of life. To put my anxieties to rest, my obstetrician would always check the fetus' heartbeat first during our appointments. As the familiar "dub-dub" of the miniscule heart filled the room, my heart rate went down.
Tech start-up Bellabeat has created a "connected system" that rethinks the pregnancy experience. The package consists of a pregnancy tracking app that pairs with a fetal Doppler device, allowing expectant mums to listen to their baby's heartbeat. The app also includes a pregnancy weight tracker and a kick counter to count baby's kicks.
The palm-sized Bellabeat fetal heartbeat Doppler attaches to your smartphone and has headphones for listening in. I got the best results with a little bit of ultrasound gel on the receiving pad to help pick up sounds in the womb.
The attached Doppler can be used on its own, but when connected to the app it is also able to provide real-time visualisations and measurement of baby's heart rate. It can take a while for an untrained ear to decipher all the sounds so it was useful to have my doctor help me differentiate the sounds: of the flow of blood through umbilical cord vessels, mum's heartbeat and the baby's heartbeat, which sounds like a galloping horse.
The kick counter is a two-hour timer that tracks how long it takes to feel up to 10 movements the baby makes. Kick counting is an established means to help keep track of the baby's well-being. As babies grow, their little nest gets cramped and earlier free-floating acrobatics can seem diminished. The kick counter can help to reassure expectant mums that baby is still moving healthily.
The system is a welcome means to track, store and monitor prenatal milestones over the long term.
: One of the best and most unexpected outcomes we found when using the Bellabeat system was that dad could also be intimately involved - hearing baby's heartbeat and daredevil acrobatics in the womb every evening. Those first moments for the future dad are priceless.
