A comprehensive Finnish study has revealed that monitoring the mother's heart rate during childbirth, alongside the fetus's heart rate, significantly reduces the risk of brain damage in newborns. This finding challenges the widespread use of external fetal heart rate monitoring alone, which can sometimes miss signs of fetal distress due to oxygen deprivation if the mother's heart rate is not concurrently tracked. This oversight can lead to the fetus's distress condition remaining undetected, as the fetal heart rate might be confused with the mother's during monitoring.
