Where can you feel your heartbeat?

After a big run, something inside you goes thump, thump, thump. That busy thumping is your heartbeat. When you stop and stand still, can you feel it bumping, fast and strong?

It goes on bumping inside you all the time. So where can you feel your heartbeat? Let's find out together.

Your heart sits inside your chest, behind the hard bones there. Lay your hand flat on your chest. You can feel it thump right there.

Each thump is your heart giving a strong squeeze. The squeeze pushes blood out of your heart. Your blood needs that push to carry food and air to every part of you.

The blood rushes out through tubes that go all over your body. These tubes reach your toes, your fingers and the top of your head. Every squeeze sends a new push of blood along them.

Each push makes the tubes bump, like a wave running down a garden hose. That bump is called a pulse, which means the tap of blood pushing through a tube. You have a pulse wherever these tubes go.

Most tubes hide deep under your skin, so you cannot feel them. In a few places, a tube runs close to your skin. There, your fingers can feel the pulse.

One of those places is your wrist, on the side just below your thumb. Two fingers resting there can feel a soft tap, tap, tap. That is your pulse tapping on your fingers. Can you guess one more place where a tube runs close to your skin?

It is your neck! At the side of your neck, just under your jaw, a big tube carries blood up to your head. Two fingers resting there gently can feel your pulse tapping too.

Our new word today is pulse. Each heart squeeze pushes blood, so you feel it in your chest, wrist and neck. A pulse is that push tapping inside a tube.

Your heart keeps its steady beat for you all night long, so rest well, little one.