Throughout labor, our baby benefits from close monitoring. And this especially thanks to mataituina, whose information is collected by midwives or obstetricians.
What is monitoring?
Placed on your stomach, the two monitoring sensors (or cardiotochograph) allow you to record our baby’s heartbeat ma lafrequency and intensity of our contractions. Some of them can sometimes cause his heart rate to slow down. Thanks to this device, the medical team therefore ensures that there is a good fetal vitality, that is to say from 120 to 160 beats per minute, and good uterine dynamics, with three contractions every 10 minutes.
This monitoring is mandatory throughout childbirth, as soon as it becomes medicalized, that is to say that an epidural is placed.
Outpatient monitoring
This device differs from classic monitoring because it allows the mother-to-be to walk, which improves the progression of the baby’s head in the pelvis. She is monitored from afar thanks to sensors placed on her stomach, which emit a signal to a receiver located in the midwifery office. Ambulatory monitoring remains however very rarely used in France, because it is extremely expensive and also requires that the epidural be ambulatory.
PH measurement with a scalp
If your baby’s heart rhythm is disturbed during childbirth, the midwife or doctor will take a drop of blood from his head and take a pH measurement. This technique allows you to know if your baby is in acidosis (pH less than 7,20), which would indicate a lack of oxygen. The medical team can then decide on an imminent extraction of the baby, by forceps or cesarean section. The results of the pH measurement with a scalp are more reliable than a simple analysis of the heart rate, but the use of this method is also more punctual and it depends on the practice of the medical teams. Some favor the measurement of lactates with a scalp, which is based on the same principle.