Want to Hear Your Baby's Heartbeat at Home? There's an App for That

If you've ever found yourself going about your daily routine and desperately wishing you could hear your baby's heartbeat, you'll want to download this app. Nothing can compare to that moment when you first hear that heartbeat at your doctor's office, but getting a replay whenever you want is pretty darned priceless.

The Shell app comes from Bellabeat, a startup that aims to help women lead their healthiest lives. "Shell – Baby’s First Heartbeat Listener enables expectant parents to hear their baby’s heartbeat in a natural and non-invasive manner, similar to placing your ear on the belly and turning the volume up," Bellabeat wrote in a blog post.

The app works in conjunction with an add-on you'll have to purchase for your phone in order to capture a baby's heartbeat. Once you've attached the add-on to the base of your phone, all you have to do is place the phone on your belly and let the technology do its thing. How easy is that? The app and the add-on filter out ambient noise to help make the sound of the baby's heartbeat really pop. The brand compares this to the effect you experience when you hold a seashell to your ear, which might explain why they chose to name the app "Shell."

Bellabeat's team stresses that this is not a medical device, so if something seems amiss (or the heartbeat doesn't seem to come through,) don't fret! Instead, go see your doctor to make sure everything is as it should be.

You can do more than just hear your baby's heartbeat with Shell's app, which can really function as a standalone product: The app also lets you record and share tracks with your friends and family—it even gives you tutorials on fetal heart positions. Interested? You can download the app for free right here.