Thursday, May 22, 2014

Has anyone had a level 2 ultrasound? Can you explain?




Lis


NOT A 3D. Just a normal scan that is more detailed and they go through thoroughly looking for defects etc. and give you a better picture of what is going on with your child...I am just a bit nervous about an appt I have on Wednesday.


Answer
I'm assuming you mean the 20 week one? Here in UK we call that anomaly scan. The scan is a routine one offered to all pregnant women about 20 weeks into their pregnancy and is designed to screen for any potential problems with the organs, skeleton, skin and development. Some places can also tell you the sex.

This is an enjoyable scan for most parents and the likelihood of a problem is small- in less than 2% of scans we detect a problem and in most of those the problem is minor. Some major problems can also be detected at previous scans so if all looked healthy at your 12 week scan, and you've not had any problems since, then chances are high your baby is fine.

The scan itself is like all ultrasounds- performed by a qualified doctor, midwife or sonographer ina darkened room, where ultrasound jelly is applied to your abdomen then the scanner placed on your bump to give the image on screen. The scan lasts about half an hour, and you'll be given pictures of your baby afterwards.

Some places say you need a full bladder, but I don't recommend this after 16 weeks as it can actually obscure the view.

Good luck and congratulations on your baby.

Poll: Why do we smile?




Regenerate


Well, why do we?


Answer
Smiles are generally accepted as a universal facial expression of happiness or joy. We get instincts about which smiles are more genuine, are more felt than others, and which are more forced and more politely construed. I wanted to find out whether smiles are a social reaction- something learned amongst society- or whether thereâs an actual biological reason why, when we are given a positive stimulus, our cheeks bulge and the corners of our mouths turn upward. I started with the understanding that because it would be difficult or impossible to define happiness on an individual level, which I am taking to be the stimuli of the smiles themselves, the results would have to be more generalized and the findings would probably be somewhat controversial and less conclusive. I proposed that smiling was more directly linked to a physical, neurobiological response than to social interactions, because I assumed that there had to be some reason why even the most creative and brilliant of thinkers followed the rest and smiled to show pleasure.


For this paper, I chose to define happiness or pleasure as something we instinctually, consciously think we enjoy. I read that there are different types of smiles, which are often grouped into two categories, âDuchenne smilesâ, and âPan American smilesâ (1). The âDuchenne smileâ, named after researcher Guillaume Duchenne, involves the movement of the zygomaticus major muscle near the mouth, and the orbicularis oculi muscle near the eyes. It is believed that this smile can only be produced as a result of genuine positive emotion, making it involuntary. By contrary, the âPan American smileâ involves only the zygomaticus muscle, and is entirely voluntary, being used more often used to show politeness or mask true emotion (2). This suggests a partial control we have over the kind of smile we show when it comes to realizing that we need to put a smile on our faces for social approval, but little control over smiling about things that genuinely make us happy.


Stroke victims help us understand more of the distinctions between these two types of smiles. When they have had damage to their motor cortex, they often cannot physically concoct their faces into smiles voluntarily, but can smile Duchenne, involuntary smiles, when given a positive stimulus (3). Those having more damage to the deeper-seated basal ganglia can smile on command, but canât smile as an involuntary reaction, for example, when they hear something they find funny (4). This shows a difference in the roles of different muscles and neurons when it comes to the different types of smiling, suggesting a correlation between not being able smile voluntarily with injury to the motor cortex, and not being able to smile spontaneously with injury to the basal ganglia. The latter is often seen in Parkinsonâs disease patients, in whom the basal ganglia degenerate, and there becomes impairment to voluntary movement, with much loss of involuntary movement, including tics, as well (5).

While this shows that different parts of the brain and different brain messengers control different functions, I wanted to combine that with the social factor of smiling in an attempt to put it all together to determine how smiles work. Many studies have indicated that smiling is an innate reaction (1), most often due to happiness. This claim has been made as a result of several factors, including being based on studies of fetuses and children at young ages.


Since 2001, a four-dimensional scanner has been used to allow doctors to see that babies in the womb exhibit facial expressions (6). With the corners of the mouth turned up and the cheeks bulging, obstetrician Stuart Campbell, whoâs in charge of this new discovery, says, âwhatâs behind the smile, of course, I canât say, but⦠I think it must be some indication of contentment in a stress-free environmentâ (6). The 4D scanner, which also produces 3D images that move in real time, shows that babies start making finger movements at 15 weeks, yawning at 18 weeks, and smiling, blinking, and crying at 26 weeks. After birth, infants do not usually smile until they are 6 weeks old, creating a further interest to survey the womb and why there is this gap of time where no smiling occurs, perhaps because the infant must adjust to its new, less content surroundings. This new information on the subject suggests that perhaps smiling is a reflex to positive feelings, while at the same time can also be a response to hearing social communications from inside the womb.


Another interesting study was done on feral children who live in isolation from human contact and have remained unaware of human social behavior and unexposed to language (7). While there having only been just over a hundred reported cases, these children generally do not smile (1). Isolated from human interaction, they lend an interesting view to the question of why we smile. Since there are so few that are feral, placing great emph




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