Barb's Daily Dose

Pregancy After Miscarriage

In my practice, I care for many women who are pregnant.  It can be a magical time and I love, love, love seeing women for their first prenatal visit.  The best part of the 1st trimester ultrasound is that I can confirm the pregnancy and establish a firm due date.  Even though most pregnancies will be healthy and normal, there's always the chance that I won't see a beating heart or other indicators of a healthy, viable pregnancy.  I know that often the woman and her partner haven't slept the night before worrying about the 1st visit, and my blood pressure and heart rate are a bit elevated as I prepare also for the first ultrasound. 

Tilted Uterus and Miscarriage

I received this email the other day and thought I'd share it here because of the opportunity to correct some myths.

Dear Nurse Barb,

I had my first ultrasound at 8 weeks and got to see the heartbeat (150 beats per minute) and then I had my second appointment 2 weeks ago and got to hear the heartbeat on the doppler.  I had the NT ultrasound and blood work done on Wednesday.  They measured the fluid by neck and said everything looked good.  I will get the blood results back by mid-week. 

Ultrasounds

Should I be worried about having too many ultrasounds during my pregnancy? Will it affect my baby in any negative way? And how many ultrasounds are normal to have? I wondered about this when I was in my training and learning how to do ultrasounds. The good news is that we’ve had ultrasound technology for over 25 years and there have been no reports of any negative side effects on babies or on children who’ve had ultrasounds. Literally millions of children and people have had at least one ultrasound while they were in their mom’s tummies. Many have had more than 3 and some more than 5 ultrasounds. Depending on whether it’s a high risk pregnancy, a pregnant mom may need 5, 8 or even more ultrasounds. I have some high-risk patients who have had 10 ultrasounds, because toward the end of the pregnancy we needed to look at the baby and the amount of fluid every week. So rest assured, ultraounds are a safe way to look at your baby and for health care providers to evaluate their growth, development and health.