What is a limited ultrasound and why do I need one?

You may have recently taken a pregnancy test and it’s — positive! Now what? Well, you probably have a million and one things going through your head. You may even be thinking things like: “I didn’t want to be pregnant”, “How am I going to do this?”, or “I just don’t want this!”  A positive pregnancy test can make you think about a lot of things, but one thing you may not know you need to think about is a limited ultrasound.

Before you go ahead and make any decisions regarding your pregnancy, you need to take a pause. If you had a home pregnancy test, it probably showed two lines. Now what?

A urine pregnancy test shows your HCG levels, which indicates you’re pregnant. It does not show where your pregnancy is, how far along you are, or if there is a heartbeat.

This is where a limited ultrasound would be necessary.  What is a limited ultrasound exactly? And why do you need one if you know you’re pregnant? Those are good questions.

A limited ultrasound is performed to gain specific information about the pregnancy, like the location of the pregnancy (inside the uterus vs ectopic), the viability of the pregnancy, and the age of the pregnancy. A limited ultrasound does not provide detailed information about the well-being or gender of the fetus.

At Alcove Health Women’s Clinic you will meet a Registered Nurse who will assess to see if you qualify for a limited ultrasound. We are RNs who are trained in limited obstetric ultrasounds.

First we will check to see what your LMP (first day of your last menstrual period) is. For every woman, this is very different. Then we’ll ask about your symptoms. Again, every woman may or may not have symptoms and they may differ. This is part of our responsibility to take an accurate health history before we proceed.

Once you qualify for an ultrasound we only check for three things: location, size, and cardiac activity. The first one is location. There are times when women will have a positive pregnancy test but if the pregnancy is outside of the uterus, that is what we consider ectopic. This can be very dangerous. An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the main cavity of the uterus.