What happens at the 20 week anatomy ultrasound?

[Starlight32]

What were you experiences with the ultrasound? How long did it take? Does the technician say a lot during it?

 

[biscuits104]

My doctor did mine so I don't know if it's different with an ultrasound tech. If they have spoken in the past and showed you different things, then I would expect they would do the same thing this time. They start with the brain and make sure everything looks okay, then they check the heart (four chambers), stomach (are they swallowing amniotic fluid?), spine (straight and pretty like train tracks), umbilical cord (check the flow to and from the mom), bladder (filled with urine/amniotic fluid?), sex (confirm boy or girl), etc. Mine was just this past Monday...I guess they do it at 18 weeks here. I would say it was 10-12 minutes long. My baby was really wiggly but he was good at pausing the image on the screen to get a good look at everything. I spent most the time holding my breath so I didn't cause any extra movement. Report back on how yours goes!

 

[Kitteh_Kat]

Mine went pretty quick; about 15 minutes altogether I think. Baby cooperated so the tech was able to get all of his measurements and pictures. The guy was very chatty and pointed out everything and what he was doing. They had a TV mounted on the wall so I could watch the whole thing too. The worse part was having to drink all of that water and then hold it in!

We did get a very pleasant surprise from it - he gave us a CD with the images and two videos of baby moving around; was not expecting that!

 

[Unexpected212]

both mine took around 30 minutes. Sometimes she had to wait for the baby to move a bit and give her a better view of certain parts.

I hate the anatomy scan. They stare at some bits for ages and your thinking 'Whats wronggg!!!!'

 

[musicmomma]

Mine always last about 30 mins. At both they told us the gender first if we wanted to know! We did! Then they take heart measurements and brain and legs and arms.

 

[SaraVO]

Mine was close to an hour. It took her thirty seconds to tell us the gender but he was mooning us and absolutely not awake or interested in being woken up so pictures were hard to come by they even sent me to the bathroom and on a short walk, but he is his father's son and didn't want to share his heart pictures. I ended up going back for a second try. That one was less than ten minutes they got the pictures and we were all done. I won't lie we got to watch him on the screen for almost an hour and for us it was pretty great but definitely not the norm.

 

[wannabemomy37]

Yeah mine was about 15 mins. Exactly like first PP said, they measure head/brain, heart, stomach, spine, legs, your ovaries and cervix too, as well as the placenta.
I had to drink 32oz water an hour before and had to hold it until afterwards. It was slightly uncomfortable but once you see your little baby its not a bother. When they're done tho you'll feel you're going to explode lol
Mine was only abdominal, but I've read they can do tv if they need better images of your cervix
It was the best 15 mins of my life!!

 

[NextMinute]

Mine took around 45 mins, the first session lasting around 30mins and then the tech told us to take a walk because baby wouldn't move out of the position she was in which was bad for looking at the spine. Our tech was great and talked through everything and even allowed us to video the us.