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
I just wanted to write and share my story. Maybe it will help someone. When I was six weeks pregnant, I started spotting (which ended up being implantation bleeding). Being my first pregnancy, I was concerned. I couldn’t get in to my regular dr. right away, so I ended up going to a facility that catered to Medicaid patients, though I believed it would offer the same care as any facility would. It was here that the nurse gave me a vaginal ultrasound and turned on the doppler; I heard my daughter’s heartbeat for the first time on this day. And it is this ultrasound that I believe gave her injury to her brain, as described by her neurologist. She literally turned four yesterday. At birth she had a slow heartbeat that kept dropping, and after a night in the transition room and a night in NICU, we were sent home. Everything seemed to be fine. Six months later, she would not use her left hand and left foot, which we would later find out was from brain injury to the right side of her brain, diagnosed as hemiplegic cerebral palsy. She is not mentally impaired, far from it, but now she has been diagnosed with mixed expressive-receptive language disorder, which means she has a hard time understanding people and expressing herself verbally. My husband and I truly believe that ultrasound should not be in the obstetric room as it indeed harms more than anyone truly realizes. After that initial ultrasound, I went to the dr. the very next week, and they did a vaginal ultrasound as well, but no doppler, the tech saying that she would never turn it on that early, that it could harm the fetus (I found out later from her that doppler should not be turned on until 16 weeks, which then would be an abdominal ultrasound, more of a wall of protection for the baby). You will never know how much my heart dropped that day, but I had hope in God that He could protect my daughter. He did, in the perspective that He kept her alive: she has injury to her brain (according to the neurologist, it looked as if something “interrupted” her normal neuronal migration); she is also off a bit in her ribs and nose and ears, though no one but me notices, and that’s from hours of looking at her while breastfeeding. I came to the conclusion of the first ultrasound being the culprit-though I don’t believe any to be great for the fetus-after the five-month ultrasound showed my daughter was lagging, the dr. saying she for sure had Down’s. I believe that the first ultrasound started it all, being that doppler was used so early on. The dr. made me get a level II ultrasound which took an hour-and probably didn’t help my daughter any. In fact, the ultrasound didn’t catch the fact that she had brain injury, which they are not the greatest at detecting…the irony! I never drank, never did drugs, never smoked during pregnancy; I ate well; didn’t go out too much; had none of the viruses that could cause brain injury to my baby. And the MRI showed that my daughter didn’t have a stroke or ischemia. Nothing could have caused this injury except that initial ultrasound. In fact, I have read three medical journals that support this, the same type of neuronal migration interruption founded in mice who were subjected to this technology. I can’t change things for my daughter, just love her and know that God is in control and He can heal her and help her overcome her limitations. Even if He doesn’t, she is still my daughter and I will always love her. I am grateful that she wasn’t killed by the whole experience, and I do feel huge regret and guilt for not researching ultrasound more and for going to that first facility, but maybe all that we’ve been through will help someone else for the better. I wish I could change things for my daughter; I’d give her my life if it would help her. It’s a hard thing to see your child fall constantly because of damage to the brain that controls motor function, and it’s hard to see kids look at her like she is a freak because she is babbling and stringing some words together. It was hard to hear therapists say she may never walk or crawl. It was really hard to see her unable to turn over as a baby because her arm would not allow it (she ended up in my bed for fear she would throw-up and choke to death). I don’t wish this on anyone, so I hope that whoever reads this finds an answer to whether or not ultrasounds are dangerous. My second child had no ultrasounds and is healthy. I just wish I had known earlier. And believe me, after all this does happen to your child, that same medical community sure won’t help rectify the situation. We ended up going to a midwife group after that level II ultrasound; they were great, though they did use doppler. With my second, I made them use a fetoscope. We are now in the process of finding a lawyer to fight for our daughter, because everyone should be made aware of their dangers. Women should be made aware of all the dangers before being given one, then make the choice for themselves. I will not be surprised when they finally connect the dots of ultrasound and autism, language disorders, cerebral palsy, etc. It’s just a tragedy that all these poor babies will have to be the victims.
Oh I only wish it were true that midwives don’t believe in fetal monitoring! Today we went to visit our fourth midwifery and I’m tellin’ ya I could have sworn she was an old school ob/gyn, focusing exclusively on all the things that could go wrong, and all the risks I’m at for being 8 weeks pregnant after IVF and (even with my great health) my being 42 was going to bring up the potential for stillbirth (even though the actual scientifically proven risk is only .8%)…ending with telling me how I’d have to do fetal monitoring for the last 4 weeks of pregnancy. It was SURREAL. Fortunately, we have good instincts and got the heck outta there and picked a wonderful holistic midwife with 16 years of experience who treated – as midwives should – me like a regular woman, not a medical emergency 🙂
Reading this article in 2015 and at eight-weeks pregnant. Decided to look up the risks of ultrasounds after learning that a friend of a friend had a scan at ten-weeks and used it as a means of letting others know she was pregnant. A wise woman noted that ultrasounds are very risky and wondered why the woman would subject her baby to the scan being that she is not considered high risk. Her comments sent me on a search for information on the risks. After reading the research, comments from other women, and also info on this site, I have confirmed my decision to forgo both the ultrasound and Doppler for this pregnancy. I recall having had an early scan and mid-pregnancy scan with my first, Doppler at appointments, and being subjected to wearing a fetal heart monitoring during my labor –although I had a low-risk and healthy pregnancy. I loathed being hooked up to monitors and told to assume a birthing position on my back. My first child is completely healthy, but I would be devasted had I learned that my child was affected by the testing. It may have helped that I breastfed for an extensive time. For this reason, I will absolutely only give birth in a birthing center or at home. Never again. Also, I will not take any birth control like depo shots after the pregnancy while breastfeeding or otherwise. I don’t care what these medical “geniuses” and “professionals” think about all this being safe. Intuitively, I know my baby is ok. Our mothers and grandmothers and scores of generations prior did just fine. Thanks for this article.
Ditto!! I’m on a quest to determine the necessity of EVERYTHING that’s pushed on us. I’m about 3 weeks gestation and I’m in the process of discovering and uncovering as much as possible, having been inspired by documentaries “The Business of Being Born” and its follow up “More Business of Being Born.” I don’t want to be extreme on either side of I don’t have to be, but I intend to be well informed and if that turns out to be an annoyance or nuisance to my Healthcare professional, then so be it! That’s not my intention, but it may just be the case. I’m excited to learn all I’ll be learning. And it’s funny because much of this began as a result of needing to understand why my health insurance won’t cover certain things. Granted, it’s not for good reason other than profit as opposed to the sole benefit and protection of mother/child. But it’s all good, that’s the ultimate responsibility of me and my husband! My journey continues…
And thanks to the author for sharing!! God bless!
I am due in May my twin boys are about to turn two and are still not talking. They know what everything is, but cannot say anything but “mum-mum”, dada, and one says bwu for blue. They blasted them with ultrasounds because they are identical, and I feel so guilty for letting them be victims of modern “medicine”. They even kept one in the NICU despite an APGAR of 8 for 2 weeks. The biggest nightmare I have ever lived let me tell you, especially when the doctors even said my baby was healthy. Was clearly a money making motivation. Looking back, I wish I had gone with a midwife, homebirth and stayed away from that whole nightmare that may be the cause for their speech delay. This time around its home birth for my baby because I don’t trust any mainstream providers these days, its no wonder everyone is sick.
Fantastic! It will be exciting to hear how this baby will do in a few years.
The two best books about children and childbirth and woman’s health I know of, and these two are the first and so source in their area of knowledge, that is to say, it works and has not been changed over and over again, are:
Every Woman’s Herbal by Dr. John R. Christopher and Cathy Gileadi.
The Continuum Concept, in search of happiness lost, by Jean Liedloff.
They are incredible and you are an aware mum so you ought to read them. In the former there is a formula that will make birth very easy, to take preferably for 8 weeks before birth, and also a herb that will help milk to come and all kinds of remedies and help and suggestions for home birth. It also warns against electronics such as ultrasound.
Great article! I’m struggling over here with some midwife issues. Im almost 30 weeks pregnant and have had no ultrasounds or doppler use on me. I plan on going the rest of my pregnancy and labor with no ultrasound/ doppler. Im trying to make it very clear with my midwife that I am not ok with her using the Doppler during my labor, but she says things like if She was concerned and couldn’t hear the heart rate with a fetoscope would I allow her to use a doppler. I don’t know what to do, I absolutely don’t want the Doppler used on me and unfortunately I don’t think she’s all that comfortable with her fetoscope (it’s a small dinky lower quality one that doesn’t even have the stethoscope attached). Do I fire her and look for a new midwife or do I just stand my ground and tell her no i do not want the Doppler used on me during labor? Do I have that right?
Did you tell her to get another stetoscope? What happened? Di all go fine?
Thank you for this article. I’m one that is wary of what’s typically recommended and claimed to be “safe” by the medical establishment. However, I’m almost 10 weeks pregnant and when I declined an ultrasound at my first prenatal appointment yesterday I got lectured by the doctor – saying that since I’m 38 (high risk age) I could have miscarried and not know it. It was such a horrible experience and put such fear in to me that we are looking into having a midwife or a naturopath doctor instead. But now that I KNOW that a woman can miscarry and still carry the baby for weeks without any symptoms I’m totally freaked out. My husband is completely against ultrasounds but I want to know the baby is okay. The doctor said there was no other way to get a heartbeat at this time (doppler at 13 weeks being the other option but that seems to be worse.) What do you think? Is there anything I can do besides ultrasound to know? I read pregnancy tests are sometimes accurate but not always since the placenta can still carry the hormone.
I had my last of 8 children when I was 44. I never had an amniosentisiss or sonogram with any of my pregnancies. All 8 of my now adult children are very healthy, very intelligent well adjusted people. The doctors and their staff harassed me continuously through out my pregnancies and labor and delivery to have Ultra sounds performed, advocating their safely. I refused to have one unless there was a real good reason, like a life threatening situation. I delivered all of my babies without any medication. Five of my children were born after I turned 37. I am so grateful that I followed my own instincts. So many of my friends had babies with multitple mental and physical problems. I feel like I escaped personal disastor for myself, my husband and for my children. When is this instantly going to stop? How many more lives have to be ruin before someone yells STOP?
PS: None of my children are left handled!
I think that going into the pregnancy with a mindset that you are never going to have an ultrasound is very dangerous. I was high risk during all of my pregnancy. Increased risk of internal bleeding for me and my unborn baby. At the hospital I also spoke with other high risk moms. One of them her baby was born with her intestines outside her body…something that they spotted on the ultrasound and were appropriately prepared for when she delivered. Another one her baby had cranial bleeding…something that they were able to spot as well on the ultrasound. They were able to stop the bleed and stop the damage that was being done to the baby. I believe that without the ultrasounds you are playing Russian Roulette with serious health issues that can be monitored or even fixed. These possible health issues are permanent and sometimes deadly. Not a risk worth taking.
I totally agree! If there is a medical problem present, I would do anything necessary to save the babies and my life. My problem is with the prevelent use of sonograms for the purpose of finding out the sex of the baby or just to look at the baby everytime you have a check up. Also, the medical profession needs to inform the public of the dangers of having sonograms. That’s not unreasonable.
I think you have made some very valid points. I agree that everybody should question any medical intervention pregnant or not. I am a crunchy mother of 3 ……..and a sonographer. I just want to shed some light on your message of how loud an ultrasound is.
Ultrasound does not make the baby jump or react. They can not hear the ultrasound as the frequency is way above human hearing range (12 hertz to 20 kilohertz or 20 thousand hertz). We use around 5 megahertz ie 5 million hertz. A fetus will jump when startled by a loud noise eg a door slamming etc…most mothers will attest to that. A baby does not startle with an ultrasound.
However I don’t think anybody is aware if these higher frequencies can cause other problems as nothing has been found so far in the studies that have been performed ( the link to an increase in left handed children is still been studied as many other studies have not found that correlation) and of course to some people not even considered as a risk.
We are entering the 3rd and 4th generations of ultrasound usage and it would appear that it is reasonably safe but We all know how smoking was supposedly good for us turned out in the end. Therefore I am wary of telling any of my patients that any ultrasound is safe.
Doppler ultrasound is more intense and not generally used by a sonographer (sonogram-making images) but is used by midwives and OB’s (listening for heartbeat- no images) albeit briefly.
When pregnant any mother should be wary of anything she does and I am glad you are bringing this to the attention of the public because not enough people question the use of ultrasound. In the 16 years I have been scanning it has jumped in usage from 1 scan per normal pregnancy to now 3 for a normal pregnancy with many more if there are complications or you are privately cared for by an OB/GYN. And I think we have a new generation of medical establishment that are very complacent with the use of ultrasound among other things. Mothers need to be vigilant — no known risks is not the same as none known yet!
On the other hand the use of ultrasound to help with certain abnormalities can not be ignored especially where early intervention is necessary to save the baby’s or mothers life. There are great advantages to mothers that have psychological barriers like antenatal or post natal depression etc begin the bonding process by ‘seeing’ their unborn child.
Many of my friends question my career choice given how extreme we live on the natural end of the scale. I think it is important for us to have a voice in the medical industry and to help people navigate through it by planting the seeds of alternative choices with my patients and their health care providers or provide education to the increasing numbers of people who do question modern medicine but don’t know were to start. Lets face it when you start heading in the natural direction it is pretty daunting when you start from the other extreme. I like to think that those are the people that I help most from been in the medical system. I wish more people like me did work in the medical profession.
Did I have ultrasounds for my 3 babies….yes I did. Not full length normal ones but short little peaks infrequently so far less exposure than most. Smile
While I think it is important to be aware of the risks of excessive u/s there are significant benefits. I had two “low-risk” friends for whom this procedure made an amazing difference in their babies lives. I have no connection to the medical field and generally am very supportive of declining medical procedures if possible but a few personal experience with this have given me reason to support a single diagnostic ultrasound.
One friend, in her 20’s healthy & 1st pregnancy found out her son had spina bifida and he was able to receive surgery in utero!! She was part of a trial group and it was so successful that the trial was abandoned and the recommendation for surgery in now standard practice. This is her story: Thomas was able to potty train (something many spina bifida patients can’t manage) and is excelling in school now. (I have known Heather since jr. high – she was an athlete and an honors student who took good care of herself. She wasn’t even 30 when she had Thomas.)
The second friend found out at her 20w u/s that her son suffered from HLHS. Essentially the left side of his heart did not develop. Because they knew she was able to deliver at a university hospital with a pediatric cardiac unit where he was able to receive surgery within two days of his birth and he was immediately given a shot to keep his ductus arteriosus open.
If HLHS is not disgnaosed in the womb many of these babies can be sent home as they appear normal and healthy for the first few days. Once the ductus arteriosus closes they start showing signs of oxygen deprivation. Obviously this can very quickly lead to irreversible brain damage.
Both these children are doing very well because ultrasounds were used to diagnose these conditions in utero.
I had three ultrasounds with my daughter – and had I known this information I probably wouldn’t have had more than one, but I do know that those ultrasounds helped me deal with some emotional issues I had surrounding my pregnancy and I think my port-partum experience was better for it. My daughter is in kindergarten, reading at a 6th grade level and her IQ score is daunting to say the least, so she seems to have come out all right.
As with many medical procedures the critical piece of the puzzle is knowledge. I am glad that you took the time to provide these facts about some of the dangers, especially for women who are choosing additional ultrasounds for fun, but let’s not forget the good they can do as well.
This happened to me. I have five sons: two had extensive ultrasounds, and three had minimal or no ultrasounds done. Of the two that had ultrasounds, one is the only lefty I know of in our entire extended family, and both had speach delays. The three that had minimal or no ultrasounds all began to talk early and well. Thankfully, they all are doing fine now. I wish I had known 13 years ago about the effects of ultrasounds.