Increased cerebral blood flow in 3rd trimester?

April 10, 2015 5:26 AM

Hand! My wife and I went for an ultrasound today at week 27 and the Doppler measured increased blood in the brain, it was normal last week. (We have a high risk pregnancy and have frequent ultrasounds) they will have another look next week. My wife had fasted since the night before for the gestational diabetes test which we had right before, so she skipped her usual morning coffee and had a headache herself, could that be the cause? What are the implications of increased blood flow to the baby's brain?
posted by pairofshades to Health & Fitness (8 answers total)

Response by poster: "Hand" is the autocorrect for "you are not my doctor"
posted by pairofshades at 5:28 AM on April 10, 2015 [32 favorites]

Please do not read into or spend time considering one weird thing on frequent 3d ultrasounds. I know a thing that os really bad that my unborn chikd was diagnosed with for a few weeks....but the next scan it was fine. Do not question your unborn child's health until they tell you to. And in my experience....that's only half right. Calm down. Enjoy. Congrats!
posted by Kalmya at 5:30 AM on April 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Kalmya has it. We received some similar sorts of news over the years with ultrasounds and spent at least one frantic weekend waiting for a confirmation diagnosis which eventually came back clear. "Don't spend the weekend researching this," they told us on Friday. Right. Good luck. We did exactly that and drove ourselves to the heart of banana town.

We learned to take our cues from the doc and ultrasound tech. If they're weren't concerned, we weren't concerned.
posted by jquinby at 5:40 AM on April 10, 2015 [9 favorites]

Ask your OB. Really.
posted by k8t at 6:25 AM on April 10, 2015

I suspect the reason they check for both high and low amounts of blood in the brain is that if oxygen levels drop slightly, blood is preferentially distributed to the central nervous system to protect the brain--the "brain sparing effect." If this persisted for weeks the doctor might want to make sure nothing was wrong--but your one result is probably in the range of totally normal (and healthy and adaptive!) variation. Here's a short, friendly explanation: http://www.kofinasperinatal.org/602BC422-3048-7098-AF3016F0846B2FF4/navid/4ED09B57-3048-7098-AFA2C20C8EE9ACF7. (I am not your doctor or a doctor at all!)
posted by cogitron at 6:42 AM on April 10, 2015

I got to the point of daily ultrasound checks with a high-risk pregnancy, and what I learned was that they are super useful in aggregate and with a skilled practitioner, NOT as a single number. You have to be able to interpret the overall picture and the more experienced a technician and the OBGYN, the more accurate their diagnosis will be, and even then they will be looking at changes over time and ranges. A single weird number is "Okay, keep checking this, it might turn out to be something meaningful." They will start monitoring that and looking for a pattern, but it doesn't mean much yet.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:29 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Your wife stressing about this test result is actually more harmful to the baby and it is something that you can control. Reassure her. Take great care of her. Rub her feet.

The gestational diabetes test is so bad for us, I refused to take it. I don't fast. My body is not set up for it, and certainly not while pregnant when I'm eating for two. And the amount of sugar that they make you drink is more than I would ingest in weeks. Just assume that the test caused the unusual results. And, keep in mind that, after ingesting all that sugar, she's going to feel pretty crappy for the next few days and she needs your loving attention now more than ever.
posted by myselfasme at 8:34 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone! For future people reading, everyone was right.... It never came up again as a problem.
posted by pairofshades at 8:03 AM on June 24, 2015