MW Responsibilities

During my labour I can say that there is no way my MW checked and documented the heartbeat every 3-6 mins as I have all her notes. And I don't believe that is always necessary..

My MW checked me out on arrival to hospital, had an internal to see how far along I was and I was hooked up to the monitor to see how bubs was coping with the contractions. His heart rate was fine so I was able to labour as I pleased for a couple of hours without any further intervention.

Once I was on gas she checked again. And a couple more hours later of getting no where I was monitored and restricted to the bed on my back. As soon as there was a change in his heart rate that continued she got the hospital MW's to call in the docs.

I think as long as you discuss all that stuff with your MW and you are confident in her answers and they agree with what you want you shouldn't worry. I was totally confident in my MW, I would have wanted to hit her if she wanted to check me that often lol.

3-6 mins sounds a lot to me, I honestly don't think you would want them to check that much. Normally if they are concerned the first think they will do is hook you up to the ctg machine which constantly monitors babies heart rate and the intensity and frequency of your contractions, they can tell from that whether baby is happy or not. If the baby starts to have decelerations (which means the heart rate slows down between contractions) then the midwife would be calling the doc in.
They normally hook you up to the ctg as soon as you arrive at the hospital and then if all is looking good you would be free to get into which ever position you like, go for a walk around, a shower etc and the midwife might check you with the doppler now and again and put you back on the ctg if she thinks its necessary. From my own experience an OB/GYN was called in pretty quickly when any midwife wasn't sure what was happening. (that sounds a bit confusing but basically I kept going in and out of labour and my waters broke at 35 weeks and I spent 3 weeks in hospital before he was born so quite often I had a hospital midwife with me whilst waiting for my LMC to arrive).

I would talk to your LMC about your concerns and ask what monitoring etc she normally does.

I'd say the 3-6 mins would only be if they suspected fetal distress, otherwise it's usually intermittent. I had continuous monitoring with all of mine as I was on synto drip.
My m/w kept very detailed notes during my labours and gave me copies of them afterwards which has helped me to process things in my head - funny how much you forget! Her notes are like 12.45am small decels in fetal heartbeat 12.48am fetal heartrate back to baseline of 120bpm etc.

I would've seriously had a little tanty at my MW if she insisted on checking the heartbeat every 3-6 mins for no specific reason while I was in labour! And I only laboured for 4 hours.. imagine 3-6 mins for 24-36 hours!