Everyone, Dr. Boyd here. Welcome back to parently. Today we're talking about a very exciting subject, your ultrasound. It's important understand why we're doing this. But for many patients, the most important part of this sonogram or ultrasound, is I'm going to find out the sex of my baby. So let's talk about what we're looking at what the obstetrician is looking at when they do your ultrasound.

That's important to understand the timing, the timing is done between the 18th and the 22nd week, with an optimal time around the 20th week of gestation. Now, if your doctor performs your sonogram earlier than that, or later than that, that's not a problem. But ideally, it's around 20 weeks gestation. It's important to understand that the reason the sonogram is performed is so that we can know information about the health and the growth of your baby. So what to expect from your sonogram and how is it performed It's important to understand that you're going to come into the office and oftentimes be asked to have a full bladder. And the reason we do that is if the baby's sitting in your lower pelvis behind your pubic bone.

Oftentimes, we can't see anatomy that low in your belly. So we asked you to have a full bladder and this can be a little bit uncomfortable, but it's important understand why we do this, we're gonna look at several things. We look at the ultrasound, the first thing is we need to determine the number of babies that you have inside your uterus. Oftentimes, women have had an earlier ultrasound around the eight week mark, but if you haven't, the sonogram will confirm the number of babies that are inside your uterus. So after we determine the number of babies that you have in your uterus, we're going to look at DRAM meiotic, fluid volume. amniotic fluid is what the baby swimming in.

It looks very much like urine. In fact, it's made up of urine mostly from the baby urinating from the bladder. The placenta subsequent removes those waste products so the baby's swimming in You're in type of material, but it's sterile, that means it's clean. The next thing we look at is the placenta. The placenta obviously is very, very important. It's the lifeline of your baby.

It's what provides nutrition to your baby and removes the waste products. The position of your placenta is very, very important. Oftentimes, doctors will say you have a front sided placenta, it's called an anterior placenta. Or they'll say you have a backside placenta that's called a poster your placenta or you have a placenta at the top of your uterus that's called a fundal. placenta, or concerning. You have a placenta that covers the cervix, this is called a placenta previa.

Now, if you have a placenta previa, oftentimes you'll have to come back on subsequent visits, it's 24th to the 28 week mark, to see if that will send has migrated so it's a way from your cervix after we have determined the number of babies the amniotic fluid volume. People settle Now we're going to do what's called the anatomy scan. And basically, it's a scan of all the different anatomy parts of the baby. So we're going to start at the head and look at the baby's head and brain. We're going to look at the baby's face. Does the baby have two eyes?

A nose, a mouth? Does your baby have a cleft lip? The next thing we're going to look at is the neck. Does your baby have any tumors or masses on the neck? After we go from there, we're going to go down to the chest. Does the baby's chest look symmetrical?

In other words, does it look even inside the chest we're going to look at the heart. There's your baby have four chambers in its heart are the vessels coming off of the heart and normal location of the baby's lungs cannot be seen at this gestation. But we can often determine if the baby's chest size is small. That could mean that the lungs are not forming correctly. Now we're going to move down into the abdomen, the abdomen, often called the belly or the stomach. Is the structure from below the chest down to the pelvis.

Inside the abdomen, we're gonna look at the baby's intestines. When we look at the intestines, we're looking to see if the baby has any constrictions of the intestines inside the abim. We're also gonna look at the baby's bladder, the baby's bladder just like yours and mine fills and empties, fills and empties. In fact, I mentioned earlier that the amniotic fluid is mostly a urine type of product. Inside the abdomen, we're also going to look at the backside of the atom where the kidneys are located. Does the baby have two kidneys?

And do the kidneys look normal? And we're going to look at the lower extremities. Does the baby have two legs? Does the baby have two arms? When we look at that, then we're going to subsequently do measurements of all the various structures in the baby's body. We're going to first look at the baby's head and measure them Head and the heads going to be measured in two dimensions.

And we come up with two different measurements. One's called a by diameter BPD by parietal diameter, and the other one's called a head circumference. Now we're going to come down to we're going to measure the baby's upper arms called the humerus bones. That's these bones right here. After we measure the humerus bones, we're going to come down and we're going to measure the abdomen, and that's called the abdominal circumference. The next structure we're going to measure is the baby's upper leg bones called the femur bones.

After we measure these various structures, and we come up with what's called a composite measurement, and the composite measurement is a measurement that looks at all of the above described measurements and comes up with an average. And that average then should be within 10 days of your gestational age. So if we're doing the ultrasound at 20 weeks, the composite measurements of the ultrasound should be between 80 and a half weeks and 21 and a half weeks. Now, if the measurements are not in that 10 day time frame, we will have you come back and re measure those various structures that we've described in about four weeks. Now, if the measurements are off dramatically, then we may even at that point send you to a maternal fetal medicine specialist called a perinatologist. The last item that I want to mention is the umbilical cord, umbilical cord is at the baby's belly button.

This is what is the lifeline from the baby to the placenta. And after we finish this ultrasound or sonogram, which usually takes anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes, we will talk about the concerns that we as a healthcare provider have. Now many times you're going to see what's called a ultrasound technician. You won't even see the health care provider at that point. In my practice, I did all my own ultrasounds So I was able to talk to the patient immediately. But sometimes healthcare provider talks to you as the patient on a later date about any concerns that might exist with the ultrasound.

Either way, this is a very, very important scan. So the last thing on the ultrasound is what is near and dear to many people's heart. Is this a baby boy? Or is this a baby girl? In other words, the gender reveal anatomy. Now, the reason I performed it last is because sometimes there was so much excitement in the room that the healthcare provider sonogram tech would forget to do everything that needed to be done in the sonogram.

So I always saved that for last. If the other way you can look at this save the best for last. So that's the most exciting part for so many of you as a patient. So this is it for anatomy scan, and a gender reveal ultrasound. I hope you ended up with the boy or the girl that you wanted. Great Day