Learn About Pregnancy Ultrasound

Daddy Brad: Daddy Clay, I think my wife is having an alien. Daddy Clay: First ultrasound, it happens. It happens; yes, it looks like an alien. Daddy Brad: Daddy Clay, you know if you took an ultrasound of one of these BabyBjorn Baby Carriers, you would see thousands of little tiny Swedish engineers working to make it the best baby carrier on the planet. Daddy Clay: You are insane. To find out how ultrasounds actually work, we went to go visit Dr.Kaylen Silverberg at the Texas Fertility Center. Dr.Kaylen M Silverberg: What happens is the probe, whether it's an abdominal probe or vaginal probe because there are different kinds of probes for different situations, shoots out sound waves. Those sound waves bounce off structures and reflect back in to the probe. They generate an electrical signal that goes down the wire into the machine and the computer turns out the electrical signal into an image, a visual image that you see on the TV screen. It is an unforgettable experience. I mean the first time you see your own child and you hear your own baby's heartbeat. You know guys we think about things little differently than women do but it's still a very moving experience. Daddy Clay: If a couple really doesn't want to know the baby's sex, is it possible to go through that and not know? Dr. Kaylen M Silverberg: Sure! First of all, you can't even really tell sex until about 19-20 weeks of gestation and if you think about it pregnancy is theoretically 40 weeks long, from the first day of the women's period, 38 weeks from ovulation, okay. So before 19 or 20 weeks, you're really not going to see much of anything anyway. Daddy Clay: And have you seen and gone to the mall and seeing these like stores where they'll sell you like a 4D image, what's it all about? What do you think about that? Dr.Kaylen M Silverberg: Well, I think it's a little gimmicky. I think that media people are trying to commoditize ultrasound like they commoditize everything else and my concern is that some of those people who perform those tests may or may be not be as qualified as an Obstetrician Gynecologist or a high risk OBGYN or a radiologist to be able to interpret things and they may miss something and you may give a couple a false sense of security that everything looks fine. Daddy Clay: You know ultrasounds, I love ultrasound. The technology has just gotten so sophisticated, but you definitely as you're watching, you sort of fluctuate between amazed and horrified. Daddy Brad: They take the pictures; they take the snapshots and then put little captions on this. Some of them are funny like family joules and others are not funny like the face. Daddy Clay: Well, I understand the technologist's desire to sort of lighten it up and we keep it fun and I really appreciate their work. These are great people, it's amazing technology but I remember my first ultrasound 11 years ago. We go to see and the technologist asked me, hey, do you want to know the sex of the baby? We said, no, we want it to be magically found out. She said, okay, let's start the exam. Here is the baby's jelly and the wand, here is the baby's skull and we're going over this area and oh! Okay, did you say you wanted to know? The screen is right there, I can see it. Everybody can see it. Do you want to know the sex of the baby? I was like well a little late, I mean I am not an expert or anything but I know the gear and I'm pretty sure that this is a male child given what I saw clear as day on the monitor. Daddy Brad: I showed my son the ultrasound picture of his coming little sister and he was freaked out for days that she was going to have a tail. Daddy Clay: Yeah, which can happen if you're from South Carolina. You know if you had a really funny experience or interesting experience at an ultrasound appointment, join the conversation at DadLabs.com. We're going to start a discussion there called Notes from the Ultrasound. We hope you'll jump in and tell us what your experience was. We'll be there reading, want to see you there too, DadLabs.com Daddy Brad: We'd like to thank our sponsor, BabyBjorn. You know I know there are enough thousands of little engineers running around making BabyBjorn as the best baby carrier on the planet, but it sure seems that way. There are only hundreds. Daddy Clay: We'll see you next time here on the lab.