Electronic Fetal monitoring (EFM)

What is Electronic Fetal Monitoring?

Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM) is a way for your care team to keep track of your baby’s heart rate. The heart rate is a good indicator of how your baby is doing during labor and delivery. Soon after you arrive at the hospital, your care team will start to keep track of your baby’s heartbeat.

How is it Done?

Most of the time, EFM will be external and continuous. This means the EFM device will be attached to the outside of your body and will stay on for your entire labor. Your care team will secure the device to your torso with two stretch bands wrapped around your body that holds transducers against your belly. Transducers are plastic discs that help the device record your baby’s heart. This is painless but it may be a little uncomfortable as it usually requires that you stay in bed.

Another type of external monitoring is called intermittent auscultation. With this method, your care team checks your baby’s heart rate every once in a while rather than continuously. This may or may not be available in your situation.

Internal Monitoring

In some cases, the care team will need to monitor the baby’s heart rate from the inside. This means inserting a wire called an electrode into the mother’s vagina to attach it to the part of the baby that is closest to the cervix, which is usually the baby’s scalp. The team may also want to monitor the mother’s contractions from inside with a special monitor called an intrauterine pressure catheter that they insert through the vagina into the uterus.

What If the Heart Rate is Not Normal?

Your baby's heart rate may not always be in the "normal" range. That can be OK and doesn't mean something is wrong. At times, your care team may simply need to do other tests or evaluations to determine what is going on.

If there is concern around your baby's heart rate your care team members may bring up having a C-section done or using a vacuum or forceps to help deliver the baby vaginally. When and if immediate delivery is necessary your care team will discuss all options with you.