hey everyone this is Sarah with register nurse rn.com and today we're going to be going over fetal heart rate decelerations in your maternity class or for the OB when you're studying for inlex you will have to know the basics about fetal heart rate decelerations there's three types that I'm going to go over and in this video I'm going to hit the highlights of things that you'll need to know for your test and lecture and for the inlex and I've made it really easy and thought of some clever ways in order for you to understand this material but after you get done watching this video be sure you go to our website registered nurse rn.com and take the free quiz that will test your knowledge on the heart fetal heart rate decelerations we have diagrams that you'll have to know whether it's early or late or variable and you'll have to know the causes and it'll really test your knowledge and prepare you for your exams that you'll have to take in nursing school also we have a bunch of inlex quizzes dosage and calculations quizzes personality quizzes every type of quiz you can really think of so go there to get some free quizzes so let's get started okay we have three different types of decelerations we have early late and variable first I'm going to go over the three types of decelerations just explain the difference of how they look give you an understanding and then I'm going to go over them individually and hit the highlights of things you'll need to know for your exam but first let's go over these grid lines and these squiggly lines and explain what it is and what it means because it may definitely look foreign to because I know when I write first seen it it looked foreign to me so the first thing you need to remember is a normal fetal heart rate a normal fetal heart rate is 120 to 160 beats per minute so engrave that in your mind on the top of these tracings These are the fetal heart rates okay so tops are fetal heart rates bottom is Mom's contractions what this is showing us we are it's able to tell us when mom's having a contraction and how the baby's heart rate is responding to that contraction these little numbers on the side because fetal heart rate is at the top it measures the heart rate you have 240 210 180 150 120 and so on and then down here at the bottom these are numbers measuring how strong mom's contractions are they're measured in millimeters of mercury and it goes all the way from 100 to 20 so it's telling us how strong those are and how the baby's heart rate is responding so first let's go over early decelerations with the early deceleration before whenever you start looking at your tracing you need to look at Mom's contractions and compare them with how the baby's heart rate is responding okay mom's having a contraction see how it's peeking up through here and we're looking and baby whenever mom has a contraction baby's heart rate is go is was Baseline and then it's just being affected and going down just a little bit and it's at the same exact time that mom's having a contraction it's mirroring they're happening together so we know the reason that baby's heart rate is dipping just a little bit but it's staying normal it's staying about the 130s cuz 120s right here A Normal Heart rate's 120 to 160 so it's okay that um she's just having early decelerations the key is that Mom's contractions are mirroring the baby's dip and heart rate so you have contraction contraction then you have heart rate goes down goes back to Baseline goes back down again when Mom has a contraction it goes back up whenever mom's not having a contraction back to Baseline and then it dips again whenever mom has a contraction okay that's early deceleration next is late deceleration the key with this is you once again want to look at Mom's contractions and see how baby's heart rate is responding to Mom's contractions our baby's heart rate is starting out in the 150s that's that's normal and we see that Mom has a contraction but whenever mom has a contraction baby's heart rate isn't really responding until after her contraction ends here's her contraction and then Mom and then baby's heart rate goes down and we notice that again mom has a contraction baby's heart rate's still at Baseline not really responding and then it responds after mom's contraction this is concerning this is not normal so confusing between late and early right how do you tell the difference the key to tell the difference on this whenever you see it is that Mom whenever mom has a contraction that's when baby's heart rate is going to respond to it because what you're having in this problem with late decelerations is you have utop placental insufficiency so that's causing that the way I remembered it in nursing school is that I remembered it as an upside down you I knew it was different than early because it's mirroring it's like a mirror you flip the mirror and it absolutely looks like Mom's contraction so I knew it wasn't early but for late it wasn't mirroring and in order to differentiate if it was early late or variable I memorized that it was a u u means it was caused by utero placental insufficiency so I knew that it was late deceleration so that's how I remembered that but always remember that mom's having a contraction baby's heart rate's not responding at all it's staying at Baseline and then after mom's contraction is over that's when you have the dip and it keeps going like that now variable variable decelerations this looks a lot different than the other ones do you not agree cuz look it's not uniform late and early we're uniform looking so that's another key to how you know if it will be variable this can H the baby's heart rate will respond at different times because what's happening is that there's cord compression so we're looking at Mom's contractions she's Contracting and baby's heart rate is just all over the place it dips down she contracts it goes up and it's just everywhere so how you can remember this this is a really clever way someone shared this with me in order to remember variable because the baby's heart rate is just really jumping every everywhere it's going to cause little V's for variable starts with v and you're going to see V's on your baby heart rate so that's how you can remember a variable now let's go over these individually and let me highlight the points for you that you're going to have to know for your inlex and for your maternity lecture class now let's start at the beginning back to early decelerations out of all the three types early decelerations is what is normal there is no interventions required you're going to expect to see this when a woman's in labor what it is is the woman's having contractions and whenever she's Contracting the uterus is squeez in that baby and the baby's being compressed up against the pelvis or the soft tissue like the cervix and whenever that happens that just causes the fetal heart rate just to dip just a little bit and we want to make sure of course it doesn't dip below the normal anything less than 120 so you're just going to see right whenever that Mom has a contraction the baby it's going to mirror the mom and heart rate is just going to dip a little bit right whenever that contraction happens so it's completely normal it's the only normal one out of the three now let's go to late deceleration okay in late deceleration what is causing this this is usually a big test question you'll have the mom's having late decelerations what is the cause of this the answer is utop placental insufficiency meaning that that's not giving it's insufficient it's not giving the baby enough nutrients and oxygen for whenever mom's having a contraction so remember the key with this mom would have a contraction nothing would happen to Mom's heart I mean to baby's heart rate until after the contraction was open um over think of this like a delay um the placenta and the uterus it's it's insufficient it's not doing its job and so everything's slower so whenever the mom's having a contraction it's not really affecting the baby's heart rate until afterwards because it's insufficient but I think the best way to remember it um so you don't get it confused with early deceleration is that it's going to make a U an A U so whenever it does the U you know that if the U is not matching up with Mom's contraction it's not mirroring it you know that it's late deceleration because it's different than variable remember variable is going to form those little v's and the baby's heart rate's really scattered and all over the place it's not nice and uniform like this one so that's how you remember that with this it's non-reassuring that means that it's not a good sign so you're going to need to do some interventions next and the last one is variable deceleration so let's go over that one okay the last one variable deceleration to me this was the most easy one to pick out on an exam or on a test usually whenever a teacher or a professor gives you an exam question on variable compressions they're going to ask what's causing this the cause of this is cord compression what happens is either your cord is maybe prolapsed it's wrapped around the baby's neck or it's being compressed up and something and when the baby turns or the uterus contracts um it decreases blood flow to the baby so that's why you see these drastic drops and this is not good always you need interventions so remember with the two decelerations that you need to intervene on is variable and late the only one that's normal is early deceleration and again this can happen at any time it doesn't necessarily mean moms Contracting that's when you're going to see a response in the baby's heart rate for instance look mom's having a contraction right here and the heart rate really isn't doing anything and then after the contraction it's moving it's it comes and it goes so it's not uniform like our late and early deceleration so that's something you really need to remember so that was that okay so we went over fetal heart rate decelerations now go test your knowledge on registered nurse rn.com and type in the search fetal heart rate deceleration quiz and take the quiz or go up to the top of the toolbar and click quizzes and it should be the first one at the top and I hope this video really helped you prepare for your inlex and for maternity nursing and if you like it please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel for more teaching videos and thank you so much for watching and have a great day