Ultrasounds

Ultrasounds

If you are facing an unexpected pregnancy, confirm it with a no-cost pregnancy test provided at Charis. If the test is positive, your next step is an ultrasound. Whichever pregnancy option you’re considering, this information is an essential step in your decision-making process.

Why Do I Need An Ultrasound?

An ultrasound scan will help detect some important information about your health and your pregnancy. You learn 3 important things from an ultrasound:

• How far along you are in your pregnancy
• If the pregnancy is viable (possibly over 20% of all known pregnancies end in a natural miscarriage)
• Where the pregnancy is located (if it’s located outside of your uterus, it’s potentially life-threatening)

How Does An Ultrasound Work?

An ultrasound is an imaging procedure that uses high-frequency sound waves to create a visual image of your pregnancy.

At the Charis, our nurse manager will be conducting the ultrasound. She will place a gel-like substance on your abdomen and rub an instrument called a transducer over the gel. The transducer picks up echoes of the sound waves inside your abdomen.

The echoes are electronically translated into black and white dots. Those dots reveal an image of the inside of your uterus. The nurse can assist you in understanding the image on the computer screen.

What Charis Provides

Charis Center provides limited ultrasounds at no cost to you to verify your pregnancy, determine if it is a viable and healthy pregnancy, and give an approximate date of delivery. This information is very important to have when you’re considering your options for your pregnancy. We want you to have as much information on each option as possible. Our goal is that you would come away from your visit confident in your knowledge and empowered in your decision.

Please note we do not use our ultrasounds to determine the sex of your pregnancy. Some restrictions apply to our ultrasound program.