How far along is a baby before it gets a heartbeat?
A baby’s heart should begin to beat within the first six weeks of pregnancy. The organs form in this time, specifically the heart and lungs, and by the end of the first six week period your baby should have a heartbeat. Of course all children (still in the womb or not) will develop at different rates.
When visiting your doctor, unless he has very state of the art machines, you will not be able to hear your baby’s heart beat until the twelfth to fourteenth week. There is a machine called the Doppler machine that is able to detect the baby’s heartbeat, which evidently is beating so fast it sounds like a horse galloping. In some cases the Doppler machine is not able to detect the heartbeat until the sixteenth to eighteenth week.
Using a Pinard stethoscope your doctor will not be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat until the twentieth twenty-four week. Here’s a picture of the Pinard stethoscope.
Didn’t I see the doctor on Little House on the Prairie use this kind of stethoscope?
