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Just in time for this holiday season BabyView is giving away a FREE heartbeat animal of your choice with our DVD and CD Package.
Make sure to have your ultrasound performed before December 31, 2014 to take advantage of this FREE offer.
Call us for details at 905-837-1515 or email us at info@babyview.ca
Obstetric ultrasounds are a standard part of the process of caring for a pregnant mother and her baby as it develops in the womb. Ultrasounds allow doctors to get a visual image of the fetus which can be used to determine the sex of the baby and to find early warning signs of developmental difficulties. In addition to these prescribed ultrasounds, parents may choose to have further ultrasounds taken, allowing them to see images of their baby at subsequent stages of development within the womb. For many parents, seeing images of their unborn child fosters deep feelings of love and attachment for the child while it is still in the womb. The technology now exists to generate 3D images, and even moving pictures of babies in-utero. While these processes are not medically necessary, parents are often interested in having photos and video of their babies as keepsakes from every stage of the child’s development.
3D and 4D elective prenatal ultrasounds have grown quite popular, and there has been some controversy surrounding them. It is important to remember that a 3D or 4D ultrasound is not an acceptable replacement for a medical ultrasound under the supervision of an obstetrician. Most insurance companies will not cover the costs of elective ultrasound procedures.
For parents who strongly desire to have additional ultrasounds, there are many facilities with licensed and experienced sonographers on staff to provide 3D and 4D ultrasounds in a safe and comfortable environment. These facilities can be excellent places for ultrasound technicians to spend part of their career as well. For anyone interested in learning more about 3D and 4D ultrasound, the sites here have useful information about the procedures, the facilities, and the field as a whole. These sites and facilities are not being ranked, and are listed in no particular order, and this should not be construed as an endorsement of any particular business. However, the information in the blogs, FAQs, and other resources on these sites may prove useful to ultrasound techs and parents wanting to learn more about this fascinating process.
http://onlineultrasoundschool.com/3d-4d-ultrasound-resources/#
A new research study published in the January 2012 edition of The FASEB Journal* describes findings that could lead to a non-invasive test that would let expecting mothers know the sex of their baby as early as the first trimester. Specifically, researchers from South Korea discovered that various ratios of two enzymes (DYS14/GAPDH), which can be extracted from a pregnant mother’s blood, indicate if the baby will be a boy or a girl. Such a test would be the first of its kind.
“Generally, early fetal gender determination has been performed by invasive procedures such as chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis. However, these invasive procedures still carry a one to two percent risk of miscarriage and cannot be performed until 11 weeks of gestation. Moreover, reliable determination of fetal gender using ultrasonography cannot be performed in the first trimester, because the development of external genitalia is not complete,” said Hyun Mee Ryu, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynocology at Cheil General Hospital and Women’s Healthcare Center at the KwanDong University School of Medicine in Seoul, Korea. “Therefore, this can reduce the need for invasive procedures in pregnant women carrying an X-linked chromosomal abnormality and clarify inconclusive readings by ultrasound.”
To make this discovery, Ryu and colleagues collected maternal plasma from 203 women during their first trimester of pregnancy. The presence of circulating fetal DNA was confirmed by a quantitative methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction of U-PDE9A. Multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction was used to simultaneously quantify the amount of DYS14 and GAPDH in maternal plasma. The results were confirmed by phenotype at birth.
“Although more work must be done before such a test is widely available, this paper does show it is possible to predict the sex of a child as early as the first few weeks after conception,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “At present, parents are sometimes given the wrong information about the sex of their unborn child; this test should prove helpful in resolving any uncertainties of today’s ultrasound observations.”
Article by http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/239920.php
