Chrissy Teigen’s Pregnancy Anxiety Has Made Us Question Whether To Buy A Heartbeat Doppler

Anyone who has been pregnant will no doubt relate to Chrissy Teigen’s latest Instagram post - and her question of whether to buy a heartbeat doppler to calm nerves during pregnancy.

Yesterday, the model, who is pregnant with her third child with the singer John Legend, shared a video of herself getting a scan to hear her baby’s heartbeat.

‘On weekends we freak out! Before I’m able to start feeling the kicks, the anxiety gets the best of me and any little bits of spotting or pain freak me ouuuuuut,’ she wrote.

‘One day I swear I’ll buy one of these machines but by then I’ll be all done with having monsters!’

It’s a post that millions of women around the world will be able to relate to, pregnancy can be an anxious time. Whether it's your first or fifth child, you never know what's going on in there. Apart from when you go for a scan, the rest of the time you generally have to hope for the best. So it’s little wonder that, with so much at stake, expectant mothers can find themselves worrying about their unborn child, especially given the long list of behaviours we're told could affect our baby's safety.

Mum of two, Rosie, 38, says Chrissy’s pregnancy anxiety sounds very familiar. ‘When I was pregnant with both of my children I found myself constantly worrying about every little thing I did and whether it could have affected the baby in some way, sometimes it was ridiculous. If I had a shower that was too hot, would it somehow overheat the baby? Or if I ate some goat's cheese that turned out to have been the wrong sort of cheese and on the banned list, had I inadvertently caused some kind of birth defect?’, she says.

It can be hard to negotiate all the rules and advice and it leaves many women feeling anxious that they are somehow doing something wrong.

‘In the later stages of my pregnancies, anytime I felt my baby hadn’t kicked for a while it would spark alarm and I'd spend ages poking and prodding and trying to induce some kind of movement, just to reassure myself everything was okay,’ Rosie adds.

During her second pregnancy, a neighbour leant her a hand- held doppler, which she found reassuring. ‘I've heard mixed things about them and whether it's a good idea to use them or not, but I personally found it really helped to calm me down. If I hadn't felt anything for an hour, I liked being able to hear my baby's heartbeat without having to book a possibly unnecessary midwife appointment. It was perfect for calming my anxiety.’

Getting a doppler is a personal decision. If it can help calm your anxieties it can seem tempting, but the advice from Tommy’s, a charity helping parents-to-be or those who have lost a baby to miscarriage or still birth, says it is important that only midwives and trained health professionals use a doppler to listen in.

They explain that, when using a hand held doppler, it is possible for there to be some confusion with the mother’s own heartbeat and pulsing of the placenta which can be doubled to sound like the baby’s heartbeat.

‘This means that when you listen in, you may not be hearing the baby’s heartbeat at all and can be falsely reassured,’ they say.

Mum of one, Marisa, 31, looked into getting the at home doppler but says she had read it’s not always great for the baby. ‘In a way, having one may have made me more anxious.’ she says.

‘There are various apps you can get to listen to the heartbeat which is probably what I was being warned against, but in general I just felt more comfort by having a midwife tell me things were ok. I definitely felt pregnancy anxiety, especially during the first trimester when you know there is a 20% chance of something going wrong, you feel sick and tired and hormonal, and you can't talk to anybody about it.’

Even so, she won’t be getting a doppler if she gets pregnant again and is hoping, instead, that she won’t feel so anxious the second time around.

‘Even at the midwife appointments, it can take them time to find the heartbeat and I can just imagine myself trying and failing to find it at home and ending up having a panic attack.’

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Mum of one Jess, 34, says any anxiety she might have felt was quelled by the brilliant service the NHS provided.

‘On the whole, I was AMAZED when I was pregnant how much medical attention I got, someone was always on the end of the phone, or prepared to scan or check whenever you needed,’ she says.

‘I understand that feeling of anxiety, pre-12 weeks, worrying there'll be blood every time you go to the loo, post 20ish weeks, when the pressure feels all on you to 'count the kicks' and the bit in between where sometimes you feel like nothing is happening, so it's panic stations.’

Like Marisa, though, the fact it can take a midwife time to find a heartbeat has deterred her from ever getting a doppler herself.

‘A trained midwife once couldn't find a heartbeat for about 12 minutes using a doppler, so I definitely wouldn't trust myself with one or recommend any anxious friends got one.'