Geek Habitat

Our BabyBeat Fetal Doppler rental unit arrived today, so I fired it up this evening and started methodically scanning my lower abdomen to locate Sprout’s heartbeat. It took about ten minutes, since I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV. I kept finding my own heartbeat thanks to aiming the doppler at a major artery, and I believe I even heard the characteristic “wind blowing in the trees” sound of blood flowing in the placenta. Finally, after even Justin had tried to locate Sprout’s heartbeat, I found it — a little to the right of where my OB found it at last Thursday’s checkup.

Without further ado, we present Sprout’s first podcast:

• heartbeat at 12 weeks, 3 days

Our rental doppler unit doesn’t have an LCD screen, so I have no idea what Sprout’s heartrate is currently, although you can figure it out if I record a longer audio clip. If you count the beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4, that gives you the baby’s heartbeat. The current clip is 9 seconds long, however.