( 1 reviews )
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: 12-30-2008
Subtitle: Taking Money From Excited Parents-To-BeMy wife and I bought the deluxe version of this product (that comes with two sets of headphones, a microphone and speakers to talk/play music to the baby, and an elastic strap to hold it to your belly) early in the pregnancy. We took it home and tried it and didn't hear anything. But we chalked that up to it being too early. We broke it out again at around 25 weeks. Nothing. But it was still pretty early.26, 27, 28, 29 weeks. Nothing.Then at 30 weeks.... More nothing.We tried this all the way up to delivery (37.5 weeks for us) and we could never be sure that what we were hearing was the result of our baby moving as opposed to the mic just picking up every micro-movement. The problem is that this is just a cheap condenser microphone that is held up to the woman's belly. Holding it by hand definitely won't work - you can't hold your hand still enough to prevent the microphone from picking up small vibrations.But we also tried this with the included elastic strap (that isn't even included in this set) while my wife was lying down in a quiet room with both the ceiling fan and even the AC turned off. Sure, we heard.... something. And, at the time, we really, really, REALLY wanted to believe that what we heard was our baby. But in the end I'm afraid that most, if not all, of what we heard was just very small movements of my wife's belly. If you've ever used an acoustic stethoscope, this product sounds similar to what you hear when handling the tubes leading from the diaphragm/bell to the earpieces. Kind of a "pfff pfff *thump* pfff". The following is from the (current as of this posting) Wikipedia article on electronic stethoscopes: "The simplest and least effective method of sound detection is achieved by placing a microphone in the chestpiece. This method suffers from ambient noise interference and has fallen out of favor." That is the technology used in this product.In summary, if we had it to do over again, we would rent/buy a dopler microphone or just go without.
