What to Expect During Your Ultrasound Procedure

Your pregnancy ultrasound will most likely be conducted in the radiology department of a hospital or in an exam room in your Ob/Gyn doctor’s office. Because getting the best possible image requires you to have a full bladder, you will be given a few glasses of water an hour or so before the test—or you will be instructed to arrive with a full bladder and asked to hold it till the exam!

When it is time to begin the procedure, a technician will cover your belly and pelvic area with a clear, water-based gel that helps to prevent the formation of air pockets between your body and the transducer. The technician will move the transducer around over your abdomen, and the sound waves it produces will bounce off the structures in your body—including the baby.

The transducer picks up these returning sound waves and the computer forms an image from them in much the same way that a bat or dolphin forms mental images of its surroundings by echolocation. The sound waves produced are at a frequency well above the range of human hearing, so neither you nor the baby will hear them or feel anything at all.

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