« return to Table of Contents

Chapter 14

Preventing Problems: Knowledge is Power

(Brief excerpt of book chapter)

In the vast majority of cases, pregnancies proceed smoothly and result in healthy babies. Sometimes, however, there may be problems with the baby's development. But thanks to the technology of ultrasound and advances in medical treatment, many of these problems can be treated and eliminated. In this chapter, we share several stories drawn from our experiences with these kinds of pregnancy problems. (In order to protect our patients' privacy, these are not stories of actual patients, but rather fictionalized accounts.) Here is a summary of one of our stories.

An ultrasound at thirty-two weeks showed that this baby boy had a little extra urine in his kidneys. This is not a serious problem in most cases — often correcting itself before birth — but it means that urine is not draining properly from the kidneys into the bladder.

Here is what the doctor saw on ultrasound:

The black circular areas inside each kidney show that more urine is collecting there than is normal. (Fluid looks black in an ultrasound picture.)

The doctor continued to monitor the baby for the rest of the pregnancy. When the problem had not corrected itself by the time the baby was born, the pediatrician prescribed medicine to protect the kidneys of the newborn baby boy. Within a few months, the problem had completely resolved and the baby's kidneys functioned perfectly. "He is peeing up a storm," reported the happy parents to their doctor.

Now that ultrasound has become routinely used in pregnant women, the rate of childhood kidney failure has been dramatically reduced.