I havent read everyone's posts, but wanted to say that having an ultrasound, or multiple, have not been shown to improve birth outcome. If there is a reason to have an US, a legitimate concern, I would have one, but an ultrasound rarely gives any truely meaningful info. If a birth defect is found, it cant be dealt with til after birth anyway. I've read that results of US's are often uncertain and false positives show up and moms are told their baby may have a certain condition, and all it causes is the mom to have lots of stress in her pregnancy, but no useful info was obtained. The reason why doc's started ordering US's for every pregnant woman was a combo of consumer demand- every woman wanting one, and for liability reasons. If something went wrong with the pregnancy or birth, the doc wanted to be able to say they covered every base and took every precaution, to avoid lawsuits. Much the same reasons for many birth pratices today such as the electronic fetal monitor.
ALso, the long term effects of having an ultrasound or multiple are not known. There have been no studies proving their safety. No one knows if it increases risk of cancer, or hearing loss, etc, especially at an older age. No studies have been done, and I doubt any will be done, because what would modern maternity care do if they all of a sudden denied every woman her US unless there was some sort of actual concern? Women would be pissed!!
I've also heard stuff about the sound waves disrupting the amniotic fluid, and the electromagnetic field interfering with development and causing DNA to break and mutate and stuff. I dont even remember where I read about that. But, above all, to me, it is just entirely unnatural, and I believe that the less technology that is involved in a pregnancy and birth, the better and healthier! :)
Needless to say I turn down the dopplar and ultrasound :) I had them with my last 2 babies (well the US with my last, I still refused the dopplar), but this was before I knew much about it. My US's just costed me a bunch of money, and the only useful thing they told us was the sex. The estimated due date was way off on both. I've had friends who've been wrongly diagnosed with their baby having a cleft palate, missing organs, severely underweight/malnourished, placenta previa, a missing skull, Downs syndrom (the U/S tech actually told her her baby had Downs from looking at the monitor and was going to be disabled, which I dont think the tech's are even supposed to do!) and a 2 vessel cord. So they all ended up being extremely stressed and having lots of additional ultrasounds and nonstress tests, blood tests and amnio's done to try to determine the health of the baby. Some went to specialists in different cities, etc, for NO REASON, just because the U/S was wrong. And of course they can be wrong about the sex of baby too :) I also had a friend who was correctly diagnosed with a 2 vessel cord and she freaked out about it for the rest of her pregnancy, had about 20 additional ultrasounds and a ton of tests done because of it, was a stressed out wreck the whole rest of the pregnancy, and ended up with a healthy perfectly normal baby who's now 1 and ahead in every area of development!
but very glad that we stuck w no scans. I do believe with my last the scan would have given false dates again and the pressure to induce would have been intense.
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