When Shelley Maves' dog knocked her into the snow, causing premature labor, she was terrified that the fall had somehow injured her baby. After rushing to the hospital, she waited, hoping the doctors would be able to stop her labor. For her, the fetal monitor was incredibly reassuring.

"When you're afraid that your baby was injured, there is nothing more comforting than hearing their heartbeat," says Maves, mother of two from Puyallup, Wash. "There were times I almost went to sleep to it."

Fetal monitors have been a mainstay of the delivery room for quite some time and their use is still controversial. Some scientific studies, such as the one done by Thacker, Stroup and Peterson that was published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, concluded that "the only clinically significant benefit from the use of routine electronic fetal monitors (EFM) was in the reduction of neonatal seizures. Because of the increase in cesarean and operative vaginal deliveries, the long-term benefit of this reduction must be evaluated in the decision reached jointly by the pregnant woman and her clinician to use EFM or intermittent auscultation during labor."

There are two types of electric fetal monitors: external fetal monitors (EFM) and internal fetal monitors (IFM). External fetal monitors are usually walkman-sized and are strapped around Mom's belly via a large Velcro belt. Sensors detect the baby's heart rate and the strength of Mom's contractions and transmit them to a machine that prints a read-out of the results so that hospital staff will have a permanent record of how Baby and Mom are doing throughout the labor.

Internal fetal monitors use a small wire that is inserted through the vaginal canal and attached to the baby's scalp. They are generally considered more accurate than external monitors because the wire picks up the baby's heart rate directly, instead of through Mom's abdominal wall and uterine muscles. IFM results are printed out in the same way as the external ones.

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