Echocardiography in Pregnancy and Childhood: Why Heart Ultrasound Is Used Across Ages

The sonographer dims the lights, warms the gel, and asks a question nobody expects at a routine anatomy scan: “Has anyone in your family been born with a heart problem?” A cousin, you remember, had surgery as a baby. Three weeks later you are lying on a different table, watching a heart the size of a grape flicker on the screen, four chambers beating about twice as fast as your own.

Across the corridor, a seven-year-old is having the same test for a different reason: a murmur a pediatrician heard at a school physical. Down the hall, a woman in her third trimester with breathlessness that feels like more than pregnancy is being scanned too. Same machine, same physics, three very different questions.

That is the quiet strength of the echocardiogram in pregnancy and children. One tool, no radiation, usable from the second trimester through adolescence and beyond. This article explains how it works, who is usually offered it, what the colors and the report mean, and what to ask when the pictures are done.

What is an echocardiogram in pregnancy and children, and why does one test cover every age?

An echocardiogram, usually shortened to echo, is an ultrasound scan of the heart. A handheld probe called a transducer sends high-frequency sound into the chest (or, in pregnancy, the abdomen), listens for the echoes that bounce back from heart muscle, valves and blood, and turns those echoes into moving pictures. There is no X-ray and no radiation involved, which is the single biggest reason the same technology is trusted for an unborn baby, a pregnant woman and a toddler alike.

Three distinct exams share the name. A fetal echocardiogram looks at the baby’s heart through the mother’s abdomen, most often in the second trimester. A maternal echocardiogram examines the pregnant woman’s own heart when symptoms, a known condition or a risk factor raises a question. A pediatric echocardiogram studies a child’s heart from the newborn period onward, using smaller probes and settings tuned for faster heart rates and thinner chest walls.

Why does the heart need its own ultrasound rather than the general pregnancy scan? Scale and speed. Congenital heart defects, meaning structural differences present at birth, affect about 1 in 100 babies according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making them the most common type of birth defect. Picking up a hole between chambers or a narrowed valve requires frames captured many times a second and a sonographer trained to read a heart that beats 120 to 160 times a minute. A general anatomy scan screens; an echo studies.

What an echo cannot do also matters. It shows structure and blood flow, not the electrical rhythm in detail, and it cannot predict every problem that might appear after birth or later in childhood. Think of it as the clearest available window, not a guarantee.

How heart ultrasound works and what actually happens in the room

Sound travels at different speeds through fluid, muscle and bone, and part of it reflects wherever two tissues meet. The transducer emits a pulse, waits a few millionths of a second, and measures what returns. From the delay it calculates depth; from the strength of the echo it assigns brightness. Repeat that thousands of times a second across a fan-shaped slice and you have a live, grayscale image of a beating heart. Tilt the probe and the slice moves, which is why sonographers rock and rotate the transducer so deliberately.

Doppler is the second trick. When sound bounces off moving red blood cells, its pitch shifts slightly, the same effect that makes an ambulance siren drop as it passes. The machine converts that shift into a speed and a direction, so the team can see blood crossing a valve, leaking backward, or squeezing through a narrow spot.

In practice the appointment is undramatic. You or your child lie on a padded table, often on the left side so the heart settles closer to the chest wall. Three sticky electrode patches track the heartbeat so each image can be timed to the cycle. Warm gel goes on, the probe presses gently, and the lights are lowered to make the screen easier to read. A standard adult or pediatric echo usually takes about an hour, according to Mayo Clinic; a fetal echo can run longer because the baby chooses the camera angle, and the sonographer may wait for a roll or a kick.

You may hear a whooshing sound when Doppler is switched on. That is blood flow made audible, not an alarm. The sonographer is usually not permitted to interpret findings on the spot; a cardiologist reviews the stored clips and writes the report.

What do the colors red, blue and yellow mean on an echocardiogram?

Color Doppler is the part of the scan that looks like weather radar painted over the heart, and it is the part families ask about most. The convention is simple once stated: red means blood is moving toward the transducer, blue means it is moving away. The letters BART, “blue away, red toward,” are how trainees remember it. Crucially, the colors have nothing to do with oxygen. Red blood on the screen is not “oxygen-rich” and blue is not “oxygen-poor”; a single stream of blood can flip from red to blue simply because the sonographer angled the probe differently.

Brightness carries meaning too. Pale red or light blue indicates faster flow; deep shades indicate slower movement. The machine is measuring velocity along the beam and assigning a tint from a scale shown on the side of the screen.

Yellow, green and the speckled mosaic of mixed colors appear when blood is moving faster than the color scale can cleanly display, or when flow becomes turbulent. In physics terms this is aliasing; in clinical terms it is a flag. A mosaic jet across a valve may point to a narrowing or a leak, and a bright streak between two chambers can show blood crossing a hole. The cardiologist then uses spectral Doppler, a graph of velocity over time, to measure how fast and estimate pressure differences.

Two cautions. First, a splash of mosaic in a fetal heart is not automatically abnormal; the normal fetal circulation includes two connections, the foramen ovale and the ductus arteriosus, that are supposed to shunt blood before birth and close afterward. Second, color settings are adjustable, so a busy screen on your clip may be a technical choice rather than a finding. The written report, not the colors, is what your team acts on.

What cardiovascular changes occur during pregnancy, and why do they change the picture?

Pregnancy remodels the circulation more than almost any other healthy state. Blood volume expands substantially from early pregnancy onward, the heart pumps more blood each minute, the resting heart rate climbs, and blood vessels relax so that blood pressure often dips in the middle trimester before drifting back toward baseline near term. The heart itself responds by enlarging slightly, much as an athlete’s heart does with training, and the growing uterus nudges it upward and rotates it a little to the left.

Each of those shifts shows up on an echocardiogram. Chambers measure a touch larger. Valves that were perfectly competent before pregnancy may show trivial leaks, especially the tricuspid and pulmonary valves on the right side, simply because more blood is passing through. A small amount of fluid around the heart can appear in the third trimester without meaning anything. Cardiologists reading a maternal echo interpret the measurements against pregnancy norms rather than the standard adult tables.

These changes also explain why pregnancy can unmask a heart problem that had been silent for years. A narrowed valve that coped with a normal cardiac output may struggle when the heart is asked to deliver far more. A weakened heart muscle that managed at rest may not keep pace. The symptoms that result, breathlessness, swelling, palpitations, overlap uncomfortably with ordinary pregnancy, which is why an echo is often the test that settles the question.

Labor and the first days after birth add another surge: contractions and the sudden return of blood from the uterus push the heart’s workload higher still. For women with known heart conditions, this is why planning usually extends beyond delivery into the postpartum weeks, and why an echo is sometimes repeated after the birth to confirm the heart has settled.

What is a fetal echocardiogram used for?

A fetal echocardiogram answers one broad question: is the baby’s heart built and working the way it should? It looks at the four chambers, the two large arteries leaving the heart, the four valves, the walls between chambers, the heart’s rhythm, and the direction of blood flow. MedlinePlus notes that the test is most often done in the second trimester, at about 18 to 24 weeks, when the heart is large enough to image clearly and there is still time to plan.

Planning is the point. Knowing before birth that a baby has, say, a narrowing of the aorta or a connection that depends on the ductus staying open allows the team to choose where the delivery happens, which specialists are in the room, and which treatments might start in the first hours of life. For some conditions the difference between an expected and an unexpected diagnosis is measured in minutes after birth.

The scan is also used when the heart is beating unusually. A persistently fast, slow or irregular fetal rhythm picked up at a routine visit can be studied with echo to see whether the structure is normal and how well the heart is coping. It can detect fluid accumulating around the heart or in other body cavities, a sign the circulation is under strain.

What it is not: a test that finds everything. Small holes in the ventricular wall, mild valve problems and some abnormalities of the veins returning to the heart can be missed before birth, and a few conditions evolve as the pregnancy progresses. A normal fetal echo is reassuring and meaningful. It is not a certificate that no heart issue will ever appear, and honest teams say so.

Who is usually offered a fetal echocardiogram, and who is asked to wait?

Most pregnancies do not need a dedicated fetal echo; the routine anatomy scan includes views of the heart, and a normal result there is the end of the matter for the majority of families. A referral usually follows when something raises the baseline risk or when the screening views were incomplete or unclear.

Reasons commonly cited by MedlinePlus and major pregnancy guidelines fall into three groups:

• Family factors: a parent or sibling born with a congenital heart defect, or an inherited heart muscle or rhythm condition in a close relative.
• Maternal factors: diabetes diagnosed before pregnancy, lupus or related autoimmune conditions with certain antibodies, some infections in early pregnancy, and exposure to specific medicines known to affect fetal heart development. The prescribing clinician decides what, if anything, changes about those medicines; the echo simply adds information.
• Pregnancy factors: an abnormality or uncertainty on the routine scan, an abnormal fetal heart rhythm, a chromosomal or genetic finding on prenatal testing, increased fluid at the back of the neck in the first trimester, a twin pregnancy sharing a placenta, or pregnancies conceived through some fertility treatments.

Who waits? Timing is usually the issue rather than exclusion. Early fetal echo in the late first or early second trimester is possible in experienced hands, but images are smaller and less detailed, so a repeat around 20 weeks is often planned. Later in pregnancy, as the baby’s bones harden and space tightens, some views become harder to obtain, which is one reason referrals are made promptly rather than left to the third trimester.

A woman with a BMI in the higher range, a baby lying in an awkward position, or scarring from previous surgery may need a longer or repeated appointment. None of these is a judgment; they are physics. Sound simply has further to travel.

Can you have a healthy pregnancy with heart failure or another heart condition?

The honest answer is: often yes, with planning, and sometimes the risk is high enough that the team will advise against it. Heart failure means the heart cannot pump as efficiently as the body needs; it is a description of function, not a single disease, and the range inside that label is enormous. A woman whose heart muscle recovered fully after a viral illness years ago is in a very different position from one with severely reduced pumping function today.

Echocardiography is central to that conversation because it quantifies the things that matter: how much blood the left ventricle ejects with each beat, whether the chambers are enlarged, how the valves are functioning, and whether pressures in the lungs are raised. Guideline bodies in cardiology and obstetrics use those measurements, alongside symptoms and the specific diagnosis, to place a pregnancy into a risk category and to decide how closely it should be watched. An echo before conception, when possible, is the most useful one.

Some conditions sit at the serious end: severely reduced pumping function, high pressure in the lung arteries, a markedly dilated aorta in certain connective tissue disorders, and a previous episode of peripartum cardiomyopathy, a form of heart failure that appears late in pregnancy or soon after birth, particularly if the heart has not fully recovered. In these situations the treating team may advise that pregnancy carries a substantial risk to the mother’s life.

For most other heart conditions, care usually means a joint team of obstetricians, cardiologists and anesthetists, echocardiograms repeated at agreed points, a written delivery plan, and attention through the postpartum weeks when the circulation shifts again. Medicines are reviewed because some used for heart failure are not suitable during pregnancy; that review belongs to the prescribing clinician, never to a magazine article, and no one should stop a heart medicine on their own.

Why would a child need a pediatric echocardiogram, and how do you prepare them?

The commonest trigger is a murmur, an extra sound a clinician hears with a stethoscope. Most childhood murmurs are “innocent,” caused by normal blood rushing through a small, fast heart, and an echo often exists to confirm exactly that. Other reasons include a bluish tinge to the lips or skin, breathlessness with feeding in infants, poor weight gain, fainting during exercise, chest pain with exertion, a family history of cardiomyopathy or sudden unexplained death, genetic conditions associated with heart differences such as Down syndrome, Kawasaki disease, and monitoring during treatments that can affect heart muscle, such as certain chemotherapy regimens. Children with a repaired congenital defect usually have echoes on a schedule for years.

Preparation is mostly about comfort, because a still, calm child means better pictures and a shorter scan. A few things that genuinely help:

• Say what will happen in plain words: a dark room, cool gel, a small camera that presses on the chest and makes a whooshing noise, and nothing that hurts.
• Bring a tablet, a favorite show, a book or a comfort toy. Many departments have a screen on the ceiling for exactly this reason.
• Feed a baby shortly before the appointment, or bring a feed to give during the scan; a drowsy, full infant is the ideal patient.
• Dress in a top that opens at the front or is easy to remove.
• Ask ahead whether your child can lie on your lap or chest. Many can.

Sedation is the exception rather than the rule and is reserved for children who cannot stay still enough for the pictures the team needs. If it is proposed, the pediatric team explains the plan, the fasting instructions and the monitoring; any decision about medication rests with them. Older children and teenagers sometimes worry most about privacy. Gowns, a chaperone and the option of a same-gender sonographer are reasonable things to request.

Fetal, maternal and pediatric echocardiograms compared

The three exams share physics and purpose but differ in logistics, which is where most confusion arises. The table summarizes the typical pattern; local practice varies, and your team’s instructions override any general guide.

Feature	Fetal echocardiogram	Maternal echocardiogram	Pediatric echocardiogram
Whose heart	The unborn baby’s, scanned through the mother’s abdomen	The pregnant woman’s own heart, scanned on the chest	An infant’s, child’s or teenager’s heart
Usual timing	Most often about 18–24 weeks (MedlinePlus); earlier or repeat scans in selected cases	Any trimester, ideally before conception when a condition is known	Any age, from the first day of life onward
Who performs and reads it	Sonographer or maternal-fetal medicine specialist; read by a fetal or pediatric cardiologist	Cardiac sonographer; read by a cardiologist, ideally one familiar with pregnancy	Pediatric cardiac sonographer; read by a pediatric cardiologist
Typical duration	Often longer than a standard echo; depends on the baby’s position	About an hour (Mayo Clinic)	About an hour; shorter when the child is settled
Preparation	None specific; a full bladder is not usually required	None specific	Comfort planning; fasting only if sedation is planned
Radiation	None	None	None
Common reasons	Family history, maternal diabetes or autoimmune disease, abnormal screening scan, abnormal fetal rhythm	Breathlessness beyond the expected, palpitations, known valve or muscle disease, high blood pressure disorders	Murmur, cyanosis, poor growth, syncope with exertion, genetic syndromes, follow-up after repair

One practical difference deserves emphasis. A fetal echo is scheduled around a window in the pregnancy, so delays matter more than for the other two. If a referral is made and no appointment arrives within a couple of weeks, it is reasonable to call and check rather than assume it is on its way.

Is an echocardiogram safe in pregnancy and for children? Risks and alternatives

Diagnostic ultrasound has been used in pregnancy for decades, and the NHS, Mayo Clinic and MedlinePlus all describe echocardiography as a test with no known harmful effects when performed for a medical reason by trained staff. It involves no ionizing radiation, no injection and, for the standard transthoracic and fetal exams, nothing inside the body. The practical discomforts are minor: pressure from the probe, cold gel, lying still, and in late pregnancy a few minutes of lying flat, which the sonographer will adjust by tilting the bed if you feel faint.

Ultrasound does deposit a small amount of energy in tissue, which is why machines display safety indices and why professional bodies advise keeping exposure “as low as reasonably achievable” and reserving scans for clinical questions rather than keepsakes. Doppler modes use more energy than plain imaging, so sonographers use them purposefully and briefly in fetal work. These are precautions, not evidence of harm.

What about alternatives? For structural questions in a child, cardiac MRI gives excellent detail without radiation but requires lying still for far longer, often under general anesthesia in young children, so it is usually a second step after echo. CT scans are fast and precise for certain blood vessel questions but involve radiation and contrast dye, and are reserved for specific indications. For rhythm questions an electrocardiogram or a wearable monitor is the right tool; echo complements rather than replaces it. Before birth, there is no realistic substitute for fetal echo for looking at the heart itself, although fetal MRI occasionally adds information about other organs.

Transesophageal echo, in which a probe is passed down the throat, is sometimes used in children during heart procedures and rarely in pregnant women when chest images are inadequate; it involves sedation and is a decision the treating team makes case by case.

What the following days and weeks usually look like after the scan

The scan itself leaves no recovery to speak of. Gel wipes off, electrode patches peel away, and a child can go back to school or daycare the same day. The timeline that matters is the one for results, and it differs by setting.

For a fetal echo, many centers arrange for the cardiologist to speak with you at the end of the appointment, because the whole point of the test is to plan the rest of the pregnancy. If the heart looks normal, that is often the last you hear of it beyond a note in your records. If a difference is found, the next steps typically include a longer conversation about what the finding means, an offer of genetic counseling or testing, a follow-up echo later in pregnancy to see how the finding evolves, and planning around delivery location and newborn care. Some families are introduced to the pediatric cardiology and surgical teams months before the birth; many describe that early relationship as the most steadying part of the process.

For a maternal echo, the report goes to the referring obstetrician or cardiologist, who decides whether anything changes about monitoring, medicines or the delivery plan. A normal result frequently closes the loop on symptoms that turned out to be ordinary pregnancy. An abnormal one usually means joining a joint cardiac-obstetric clinic.

For a child, the pediatric cardiologist typically reviews the images with the family within days to a few weeks, depending on urgency. Innocent murmurs are commonly discharged with reassurance. Small holes between chambers may simply be re-scanned in months to years, because many close on their own. Larger findings lead to medicines, catheter procedures or surgery on a timetable set by the team.

Whatever the setting, ask who will contact you, how, and by when. A named person and a date remove most of the anxiety of waiting.

What people often get wrong about heart ultrasound in pregnancy and childhood

“A normal fetal echo means my baby cannot have a heart problem.” It means no significant problem was seen at that stage. Small ventricular holes, mild valve issues and a few vein abnormalities can escape detection before birth, and some conditions progress through pregnancy. Newborn checks, including pulse oximetry screening in the first days, remain important.

“Red and blue on the screen show oxygenated and deoxygenated blood.” They show direction relative to the probe. The same artery can be red from one angle and blue from another.

“The sonographer went quiet, so something must be wrong.” Concentration looks like silence. Sonographers are also usually required to leave interpretation to the cardiologist, so a neutral face is policy, not a verdict.

“If my child has a murmur, the echo will find a defect.” Most childhood murmurs are innocent, produced by normal blood flow in a small, fast heart. The echo is often ordered precisely to document a normal heart and end the worry.

“Ultrasound is harmless, so more scans are always better.” It is very safe when used for a medical question. Professional bodies still advise against non-medical scans, and Doppler is used with intent rather than for show.

“Heart disease means pregnancy is off the table.” Many women with repaired congenital defects, mild valve disease or recovered heart muscle have pregnancies with careful planning. A smaller group face serious risk and are advised accordingly. The difference is made with data from an echo, not assumptions.

“Children need to be sedated for an echo.” Most do not. Feeding, distraction and a parent’s lap achieve what is needed far more often than medication.

“The fetal heart beats too fast to be a good sign.” A rate around double an adult’s is normal before birth. The team is interested in rhythm and regularity, not simply speed.

Questions to ask your care team

Good questions turn a report into a plan. Bring these, and write the answers down; it is remarkably hard to remember a conversation held in a dim room with gel on your abdomen or a child on your lap.

• What specific question is this echo trying to answer for me or my child?
• Who will read the images, and does that person specialize in fetal, pregnancy-related or pediatric heart imaging?
• When and how will I receive the result, and who is my named contact if I have not heard by then?
• If the scan is normal, is any further heart check planned, or is this the end of the pathway?
• If something is found, what are the usual next steps, and how urgent are they?
• For a fetal finding: will the baby need treatment soon after birth, and how does that affect where I deliver?
• For a maternal echo: does the result change my medicines, my monitoring schedule or my delivery plan, and who coordinates between cardiology and obstetrics?
• For a child: can my child go to school and play sport as usual while we wait, and are there activities to avoid?
• Is genetic counseling relevant for our family, and would other relatives benefit from being checked?
• How many of these scans are likely over the coming months or years, and what would prompt an earlier one?
• Could I have a copy of the report, and a short written explanation of what the key measurements mean?

One question that is rarely asked and always worth asking: “What would make you want to see us sooner than planned?” The answer gives you a personalized version of the red-flag list below, tuned to the specific finding rather than a general rule.

When to call your doctor

An echocardiogram is a scheduled test, but the symptoms that lead to one sometimes cannot wait for the appointment. Call your maternity unit, pediatrician or emergency services, depending on severity, if any of the following occur.

During pregnancy or in the weeks after birth: breathlessness that comes on at rest, wakes you from sleep, or forces you to sleep propped up; chest pain or tightness; a racing or irregular heartbeat that does not settle with rest; fainting or near-fainting; sudden swelling of the face, hands or legs, especially with headache or visual disturbance; coughing up pink or frothy sputum; or a feeling of dread or acute illness that you cannot explain. Severe breathlessness or chest pain in pregnancy is an emergency and should be treated as one.

Concerning the unborn baby: a marked and sustained change in movement patterns, particularly a reduction, or a clinician telling you the fetal heart rate is persistently very fast, very slow or irregular. Contact your maternity unit the same day rather than waiting for a routine visit.

In a baby or child: blue or gray coloring of the lips, tongue or face; fast or labored breathing, with the skin pulling in between the ribs; sweating or exhaustion with feeds; a baby who is unusually floppy or difficult to rouse; fainting during exercise or with no clear trigger; chest pain with exertion; or a heartbeat the child describes as racing or thumping that does not stop within a few minutes of rest. Any of these in an infant under a few months old warrants urgent assessment.

After the scan itself there is nothing to recover from, so new symptoms are never “from the test” and should be reported in their own right. When in doubt, call. The teams that order these scans would rather hear from you unnecessarily than late.

Frequently asked questions

What is a fetal echocardiogram used for?

A fetal echocardiogram is used to examine an unborn baby’s heart structure, rhythm and blood flow when a risk factor or an unclear screening scan raises a question. It is usually done at about 18 to 24 weeks. Its main value is planning: knowing about a significant defect before birth lets the team decide where and how to deliver and which specialists should be present in the first hours of life.

Can you have a healthy pregnancy with heart failure?

Sometimes yes, with specialist planning, and sometimes the risk is judged too high. It depends on the cause, how much pumping function remains, symptoms, and whether lung pressures are raised, all of which an echocardiogram helps measure. Women with severely reduced function, high lung artery pressure or unrecovered peripartum cardiomyopathy are usually advised that pregnancy carries serious risk. The decision belongs with a joint cardiac and obstetric team.

What do the colors red, blue and yellow represent on an echocardiogram?

Red shows blood moving toward the ultrasound probe, blue shows blood moving away, and yellow, green or mosaic patterns show flow that is fast or turbulent. The colors describe direction and speed relative to the probe, not oxygen levels. A mosaic jet can point to a leaky or narrowed valve or a hole between chambers, but only the cardiologist’s report tells you whether it matters.

What are the cardiovascular changes that occur during pregnancy?

Blood volume expands, the heart pumps more blood each minute, resting heart rate rises, and blood vessels relax so blood pressure often dips mid-pregnancy. The heart enlarges slightly and is pushed upward by the uterus. On echo these changes can appear as mildly larger chambers, trivial valve leaks and occasionally a little fluid around the heart, all of which can be normal in pregnancy.

Is an echocardiogram during pregnancy safe for the baby?

Yes, when performed for a medical reason by trained staff. Echocardiography uses sound waves rather than radiation, and major health bodies including the NHS and Mayo Clinic report no known harmful effects from diagnostic ultrasound. Sonographers keep exposure as low as reasonably achievable and use Doppler modes purposefully. Whether the scan is on your own chest or over your abdomen, it does not involve injections or contrast.

How soon do fetal echo results come back?

Often the same day. Many centers have the fetal or pediatric cardiologist review the images during or immediately after the appointment so that findings can be discussed before you leave. Where the report is sent to your obstetrician instead, ask for a named contact and a date. A normal result usually closes the question; an abnormal one typically leads to a follow-up scan and a planning conversation.

Who needs a pediatric echocardiogram?

Children are usually referred because of a heart murmur, bluish lips or skin, breathlessness with feeding, poor growth, fainting or chest pain with exercise, a genetic condition linked to heart differences, Kawasaki disease, treatment with medicines that can affect heart muscle, or a family history of cardiomyopathy. Children with repaired congenital defects have scheduled echoes for years. Many pediatric echoes confirm a normal heart.

Does my child need to be sedated for an echocardiogram?

Usually not. Feeding a baby just before or during the scan, letting a child lie on a parent’s lap, dimming the lights and using a screen or tablet for distraction are enough for most children. Sedation is reserved for those who cannot stay still enough for the images needed, and if it is proposed the pediatric team will explain the plan and fasting instructions; any decision about medication is theirs.

Can a fetal echocardiogram miss a heart defect?

Yes. Small holes in the ventricular wall, mild valve problems and some abnormalities of the veins returning to the heart can escape detection before birth, and certain conditions develop or progress as pregnancy continues. A normal fetal echo is reassuring, but newborn examination and pulse oximetry screening in the first days of life remain important safeguards. If symptoms appear later, a pediatric echo can be arranged.

What happens during an echocardiogram while pregnant?

You lie on a padded table, often tilted or on your left side to keep blood flowing comfortably, with three sticky electrode patches tracking your heartbeat. Warm gel is applied and a handheld probe is moved over the chest for a maternal echo, or over the abdomen for a fetal echo. You may hear whooshing when Doppler is on. A standard echo takes about an hour; fetal scans can run longer.

References

• MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Fetal echocardiography
• MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Echocardiogram
• NHS: Echocardiogram
• CDC: About Congenital Heart Defects

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.