A prenatal or pregnancy ultrasound uses sound waves to create a picture of your baby on a screen. Pregnancy care providers use it to check on the health of your baby and detect certain pregnancy complications. Most people have two ultrasounds during pregnancy, but you may have more if your provider feels it’s medically necessary.
What can be detected in a pregnancy ultrasound?
A prenatal ultrasound does two things:
- Evaluates the overall health, growth and development of the fetus.
- Detects certain complications and medical conditions related to pregnancy.
In most pregnancies, ultrasounds are positive experiences and pregnancy care providers don’t find any problems. However, there are times this isn’t the case and your provider detects birth disorders or other problems with the pregnancy.
Reasons why your provider performs a prenatal ultrasound are to:
- Confirm you’re pregnant.
- Check for ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, miscarriage or other early pregnancy complications.
- Determine your baby’s gestational age and due date.
- Check your baby’s growth, movement and heart rate.
- Look for multiple babies (twins, triplets or more).
- Examine your pelvic organs like your uterus, ovaries and cervix.
- Examine how much amniotic fluid you have.
- Check the location of the placenta.
- Check your baby’s position in your uterus.
- Detect problems with your baby’s organs, muscles or bones.
Ultrasound is also an important tool to help providers screen for congenital conditions (conditions your baby is born with). A screening is a type of test that determines if your baby is more likely to have a specific health condition. Your provider also uses ultrasound to guide the needle during certain diagnostic procedures in pregnancy like amniocentesis or CVS (chorionic villus sampling).
An ultrasound is also part of a biophysical profile (BPP), a test that combines ultrasound with a nonstress test to evaluate if your baby is getting enough oxygen.