In almost all my Lamaze classes, there are at least a few parents-to-be who ask questions or have concerns regarding one or more of the routine ultrasounds that they have had to get in their pregnancy. In the last class, one of the moms was concerned that her care provider had told her that her baby’s abdominal circumference was on the lower side, while all other parameters including fetal anomaly scans seemed to be within normal limits. As midwives, we usually do not recommend anything more than one dating/anomaly scan in pregnancy, and then if need be, another fetal doppler scan if the baby crosses 41 weeks+, as long as baby and mother are doing well. It just amazes me how reliant the entire antenatal check-ups have become on ultrasound! In both of my pregnancies, I had one ultrasound each. My mother had none, when she was pregnant with either me or my sister. My grandmother gave birth to my mother at home assisted by a traditional midwife “dai” and my mother was born breech!
Several studies are now showing that routine ultrasounds are not really helping in better care for the baby, and long-term consequences of routine exposure to ultrasound is not known. Here is a great link form Cochrane Collaboration, the world’s largest evidence-based database: 8 trials with 27,024 women were included as a part of this study – It concludes that routine ultrasounds after 24 weeks gestation, in otherwise healthy mothers, are not showing any major benefit in better maternal or fetal outcomes. On the contrary, there seems to be a small increase in C-Section rates directly due to increased interventions as a result of increased screenings.
You can read the results of the study here
-
ADULT DIAPERS