People are usually surprised when I tell them that I have never had a prenatal ultrasound despite having 3 children. Ultrasound is a standard medical procedure that most pregnant women undergo at least once during pregnancy if not 2 times or more. Even birthing centers that specialize in low risk pregnancies such as where I received my prenatal care, recommend at least a single ultrasound.
It is never a good idea to submit to any medical test without first understanding exactly what you are getting yourself into.   Just because nearly every single pregnant woman gets an ultrasound or that most medical practicioners say that they are safe doesn’t mean that you should have one or that they really are safe.
Like many things in life, “safe” is certainly a matter of interpretation!
Make sure you have all the facts in hand before you judge whether or not the standard use of prenatal ultrasound is, in fact, truly safe for the precious life you are carrying inside you!
The experience that first got me very suspicious of ultrasound occurred when I was pregnant with my first child. Â I remember that the baby jumped and seemed extremely disturbed every time I had a prenatal visit and the midwife used a doppler to check the heartbeat.
Why is my baby so upset by this doppler, I thought?   Intuitively, it seemed that something was just not right about the overly casual use of this device.
Why didn’t the midwife just use a fetascope instead, I wondered?
I went home after one of those prenatal visits determined to find out the truth.  I started researching and was shocked to find out that dopplers are a form of ultrasound!  I also discovered that ultrasounds in general are not the innocuous test that prenatal caregivers would lead you to believe.
Ultrasounds Have Never Been Proven Safe
The American Medical Association warns against unnecessary exposure to ultrasound.   A number of studies have indicated probable danger with this routine prenatal test.  One of the most concerning for me was a study reported in the journal Epidemiology in 2001 that showed that the chance of subtle brain damage increases dramatically in male babies whose mothers get prenatal ultrasounds.
Doctors have long known that left handedness in a child that is not genetically determined can be an indicator of brain damage.  When the rate of left handedness in children rises above 9% for right handed parents and 35% for left handed parents, scientists know that some form of negative impact on neural development has occurred.
In this study, the rate of left handedness for boys increased by 30% above historical genetic rates when a mother was exposed to prenatal ultrasound.  The incidence of left handedness was especially pronounced for mothers who had received more than one prenatal scan.
Left handedness has been increasing in recent decades and this puzzling rise beyond normal and historical genetic rates could very well be related to the common use of prenatal ultrasound.  The fetus’ brain undergoes critical brain development even very late in pregnancy (preterm babies are 5 times more likely to be left handed).   Moreoever, the brain of a male fetus develops at a slower rate than that of a female leaving boys at particular risk for ultrasonic injury.
The Ultrasound/Speech Delay Link
Another study that gave me pause and eventually persuaded me to opt out of all forms of ultrasound – even use of the doppler, was a study in 1993 and reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.  This study examined 72 children ages 2-8 who were suffering from speech delay of unknown cause.    These speech delay children were twice as likely as a control group to have been exposed to ultrasound in the womb.
Delayed speech is a likely indicator of sub-optimal conditions for development during gestation and ultrasound exposure seems to be linked to these less than ideal conditions for the fetus.
How Would Ultrasound Delay Speech?
Ultrasound as a potential reason for the increase in pediatric speech problems in recent years has a very likely cause.  This cause would be the incredible loudness that is produced in the womb as the ultrasound waves bounce around the uterus.
How loud, you may ask?
How about louder than your power mower, a motorcycle 25 feet away from you or a jet flyover at only 1000 feet?  How about LOUDER than the last rock concert you attended where your ears were ringing for a day or two afterward?
Yes, THAT loud!
Can you imagine the intense fright and the spike in stress hormones the baby experiences from an ultrasound not to mention the likelihood of damage to the little developing ears from 100-120 decibel ultrasound waves?
Oh, and by the way, hearing loss begins with exposure to sound at only 90-95 decibels, much LOWER than the sound the baby would hear from a routine ultrasound or a doppler heartbeat check.
Beware Continuous Electronic Fetal Monitoring During Labor
A favorite way for a hospital to monitor how baby is handling the stress of Mom’s labor is by strapping an electronic fetal monitor to her belly.   Be aware that this device is ultrasound and when it is strapped to your body, your poor child is not only enduring the stress of the birth process itself but also dealing with 100-120 decibel continuous, blaring sound at the same time!
I have no doubt that someday a study will finally be done that shows that babies that are subjected to the barbaric insult of electronic fetal monitoring during birth have more speech delay and brain damage induced left handedness than any control groups.
Just say no to electronic fetal monitoring and if your hospital or OB tries to talk you into the so called “benefits” of this practice, then find another OB!  Better yet, have your baby with a midwife at home or in a birthing center where such devices are never allowed through the front door.
More Reasons to Skip the Ultrasound
One of the best articles I’ve read on the dangers of ultrasound was written by Dr. Sarah Buckley MD in 2009.   In this article, Dr. Buckley gives a thorough rundown of the potential biological risks to the fetus from prenatal ultrasound as well as the studies that give pause for even considering such a procedure during pregnancy.
This article by Dr. Buckley is loaded with information.  If you are questioning the safety of ultrasound, I highly recommend that you dive in and read it thoroughly.  This blog only discusses the reasons why I personally chose to opt out of prenatal scans and use of the doppler.  There is much more to be told with regard to this story and more serious problems associated with ultrasounds such as a potential link with autism.
What Will Be Your Choice?
As mentioned above, after considering the biological dangers to my unborn children, I opted out of all prenatal ultrasound scans.  I also stopped allowing the use of a doppler during prenatal visits and asked the midwife to use a fetascope instead.   There is a drawback to using only the fetascope – you can’t hear the baby’s heartbeat until Mom is about 22 weeks gestation.
The inconvenience of waiting to hear the heartbeat so much later in the pregnancy seemed an easy trade-off for the peace of mind!
Note: I did allow the very brief use of a doppler during labor as use of a fetascope during the natural birth process does not work well when Mom is moving around a lot or is in and out of a laboring tub.
Even when I was 38 weeks pregnant with my third child and the midwife really wanted to do an ultrasound because it appeared my baby had stopped growing, I refused.   I knew intuitively that the baby was just fine despite my advanced maternal age.
Guess what?  I was right, the baby was indeed fine and was simply 2 inches shorter in length than my previous pregnancies which accounted for my much smaller belly measurements during the third trimester.   To this day, I have never regretted not getting any ultrasounds and am very grateful that I trusted my instincts early to question what was happening with the doppler exams.  I believe skipping the ultrasounds is a big reason why my children all were articulating complete sentences very clearly at a very early age.  Of course, nutrient dense diet played a huge role too!!   But, what good is diet if you undo it with damaging medical tests?
What were your reasons for or against getting prenatal ultrasound scans?
Update:  Medical critic and researcher Jim West has recently published a book detailing 50 in utero CAUSAL human studies from China that prove irrefutably the high risk of prenatal ultrasound even at low frequencies.  This article on ultrasound dangers contains more information on this research that Mothers must be made aware of in prenatal examination rooms.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Hi Arabella, my brother worked for the airlines for 20 years and the policy for women who worked in the industry is not to fly after 6 months pregnant as the change in pressure could be a problem. Not mentioned is the xray exposure while flying at high altitude. I have read that a flight from New York to London exposes you to the equivalent radiation of a chest xray. Not good. I myself did fly once at 4 months pregnant but it was a short flight of relatively low altitude. I would be very wary of long flights over ocean where the planes go so very high for long periods of time.
Hi Sarah,
Really enjoyed this post. Thank you for sharing this information with the world.
A random question – do you have any information or ideas on the dangers of airplane travel whilst pregnant?
My sister travelled from Australia to New Zealand during her last pregnancy and the baby flipped over for several weeks. Luckily, she was able to have it corrected, but her chances were slim. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Dr's generally recommend air plane travel is safe during most of the pregnancy , but a slight intuition is telling me differently!!
thanks again,
To all the Big Pharma trolls who are paid to spread propaganda and misinformation on blogs such as mine, your comments will be deleted and your lies will not be tolerated here.
Good for you Sarah!
Hi Mommypotamus, thanks for sharing your experience. I am ok with the negative comments .. you always get some not matter what you do or where you go. My goal was to get the info out there for those who are open to hearing the truth about the dangers of this overly routine procedures. Congrats on the new baby, by the way!!!!
onceuponthekitchencounter – you are right, actively seeking problems is not the way to go as you usually find them and they are usually either not important (as in my case when the baby had appeared to stop growing but was actually totally fine) or they are false positives as mommypotamus talked about before. You should assume and always expect that all is well as this greatly affects outcome. Our emotional state with which we approach things is so much more powerful than we realize.
This post was of great interest to me. I somehow intuitively limited ultrasound during my pregnancy – declined it near the end when my midwives wanted to see how big my baby was, and declined doppler checks at my prenatal visits. I was happy with the fetoscope and just being in tune with the baby's movements. I did have a dating ultrasounds at the beginning and doppler intermittently while in labour though. Now I won't get any next time. I'm all for just letting things "be" – not actively looking for problems. That said, I'm grateful ultrasound exists for all those times when it's truly needed!!
You struck me as a lefty 🙂 Thank you again for the great blog!!!
Great post! Although I expect you'll get a lot of negative comments, I'll bet there are a lot of lurkers who will think twice before they go in for their next scan. You will probably never know how many decisions you influenced.
Personally, I am incredibly grateful that someone told me about the risks. I have two healthy, beautiful children and have never had an ultrasound. Most people argue that ultrasounds give expectant mothers "peace," but I say that's not necessarily true. Except for one very stressful event where we thought I had miscarried, I was very in-tune and at peace during both of my pregnancies. On the other hand, I have a friend who was terrified by a Down's diagnosis during a routine ultrasound . . . only to find out later that the diagnosis was incorrect. Even when I thought I had miscarried my husband and I decided against an ultrasound. I blogged about our experience and how we found peace at http://www.mommypotamus.com/prenatal-ultrasounds-peek-at-what-price/
Linda, if you read the blog you will see that the left handedness that is attributed to ultrasound is above and beyond normal genetic rates. I don't say that all left handedness is from ultrasound!
I was and still am very confident and comfortable with the choice I made to have ultrasounds during my pregnancies. I have no guilt at all. The reason I made the statement is because I feel it is wrong to take an issue like this and say it is the wrong choice for everyone. That is the tone of the blog.
As for left handedness, I'm left handed. Ultrasounds were not around when I was born 43 yrs ago. There are left handed people in my family. My husband is left handed as well. Neither of our children(both pregnancies having ultrasounds) are left handed. I seriously doubt it has anything to do with ultrasounds. I tried to be right handed as a 1st grader, but it obviously was not the hand I should have been using to write with.
Hi Sarah,
I was not aware of all the facts during most of my pregnancies but still chose to have only one scan and doppler checks. I cn see why the lady above mentioned the guilt issue because there is a pull between putting your mind at ease by 'seeing' your baby is fine with an ultrasound and just trusting that it will be. I think it is important to recognise (possibly in your article) that for many pregnancies monitoring is necessary and can avoid the death of a baby. It is not ideal and possibly shouldn't be routine but it does have a place in the field of obstetrics.