In France, échographie is typically done three times during the whole pregnancy. First in the 3rd month; second in the 5/6th month; third in the 8th month. I did the first échographie in China. Actually I did three times in China… within one and a half months. They only checked very briefly though (a couple of minutes), probably because it’s the early stage.
After the first meeting with my sage-femme (SF), it’s the right time for me to do the second échographie. It was done in the same hospital, CHU. The purpose was to estimate the delivery day, and to examine if there’s any abnormality. A SF and a student performed the échographie. The student speaks some English 🙂
It took more than half an hour! They did very careful examination, and explained to us what we were looking at. Suddenly, they asked us whether we wanted to know the sex of the baby. We nodded. Un garçon! A boy! Although we were not sure how they could tell, we were quite excited. In the end, they provided a detailed report containing many photos. Due to the positioning of the baby, they could not get everything that they needed. Plus, the size of the baby seemed smaller than expected (based on DDR). Therefore, they suggested to do another échographie, which was done in the following week. Also, they said the first échographie done in China should be more accurate to estimate the DDG, so a translated report would be helpful. In fact, there’s only one measurement in the Chinese report – LCC. Based on that LCC, the SF estimated a new DDG, and she thought the size of the baby was okay. We were kinda relieved.
I did the third échographie at 33w+3d. Again, the SF measured a lot of things, and everything seemed normal. The calculated weight of the baby was ~1900g (25~50% in their database). The positioning of the baby was good, which I was very pleased to know.
Oh, I forgot to mention that after the second échographie, they somehow could construct a photo of the baby’s face. Will our baby truly look like that?
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