What Happens at the Anatomy Scan?


The anatomy scan typically happens between 18 to 21 weeks, but usually, they aim for 20 weeks (which is why you will hear it called the 20-week scan as well). I was 20 weeks and 2 days for our appointment but could have scheduled as soon as 19 weeks, it just didn't work out with our schedule though so we had to wait another week.

This ultrasound not only lets you find out your baby's sex but is to check on your baby's health. It can last up to 2 hours depending on how cooperative your baby is. Our appointment lasted a little over an hour. Our baby got the hiccups halfway through which made it a little harder for the tech.

The first thing the tech does when they walk into the room asks "do you want to know the sex/gender?" If they don't ask this, make it known right away that you don't want to know (if you don't want to know) or they will tell you and show you! We found out we are having a girl! Finding out right away made the rest of the appointment a little boring. The nurse explained before that the tech is not allowed to tell us too many details, but our guy told us a lot more than we expected, so I am not exactly sure what they are not allowed to say. He told us what he was looking at and constantly said "that looks good" or "that's normal." We're guessing if anything was wrong, he would have probably kept quiet.

He did mention that the baby was measuring a week ahead but explained it would not change the due date. Our baby is just growing a bit faster, which is fine, all babies grow differently. She currently weighs 1 pound! I'm hoping she stays under 8 pounds when it comes time to push!

After he was done getting all the pictures he needed, he printed off some ultrasound pictures for us and then also made a disc. We had asked the nurse earlier if they do videos or if we could record and she said that unfortunately they don't and do not allow videoing of the screen. The baby was not as active this time though so not a huge loss and we got way more photos than last time. So if you plan on getting a video of your ultrasound, make sure to ask in advance to know your hospital's policy otherwise you might have to pay for a private screening that will let you.

We were then moved to a room right across the hall to talk to a doctor about our ultrasound results. She came in and basically said everything looked good, normal. Baby girl is healthy and she did not have much else to say but asked if we had any questions. The only thing I asked was how positive they were on the sex of the baby and she said they can't guarantee 100% unless you to do an amniocentesis or they see the baby at birth but said they were 99% positive. I guess they don't want to get themselves in trouble if they happen to be wrong, but it is pretty obvious to us in the sonogram that it is a girl. The doctor said that she would send the results to my OBGYN and it would be up to her if she thinks anything else needs to be done, which isn't likely, and we were good to go!

After reading online, that last part seems pretty rare. It looks like most people have to wait till their next OBGYN appointment to speak to their doctor about their results. I'm glad we live in such a nice area that we were able to find out right away that our baby was healthy.


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