Direct Democracy: The Right of the People to Make Fools of Themselves; The Use and Abuse of Initiative and Referendum, a Local Government Perspective.. Seattle Law Review 19 (fall).
Listening to Your Heart. Your doctor will use a stethoscope to hear your heartbeat. The opening and closing of your heart's valves make a lub dub noise. The doctor can check your heart and valve health and hear your heart's rate and rhythm by listening to those sounds.
Doctors use several different methods to listen to the fetal heartbeat. About 3 weeks, one day after fertilization, when the heart first begins to beat, the sound of the little heart is too soft to hear. Very soon thereafter, they can see the motion using ultrasound technology. A doctor's stethoscope is not sensitive enough to hear the embryo's heart beating. A special stethoscope called a fetoscope works well when the fetus is larger, usually around 15-17 weeks. 1 An active fetus however, can make this method of listening a bit challenging.