Echogenic bowels at 22 week scan

[Sda06]

Long story short, my little girl was in a very awkward position at my 20 week scan so they brought me back today (22 weeks) and have detected echogenic or 'brighter than normal' bowels?

They have booked me in again for another scan with the foetal medicine unit on Friday at 9am.

Obviously very worried and wondered if anyone else has had this? The NIPT tests for Downs etc came back as very low risk so I'm hoping this is just down to over-sensitive ultrasound equipment or something like that. As soon as the sonographer mentions things like cystic fibrosis obviously your mind goes into overdrive!

Has anyone else had any experience of this. Only received the news this afternoon so I'm obviously very worried!

[Sussexmidwife]

These situations are always very worrying, but almost always it will turn out that baby is absolutely fine. The sonographer has to report anything at all unusual and it is good that you have got a specialist appointment on Friday. Make a list a of questions as they occur to you so that you can ask them on Friday, very likely though, you will be told that things look fine. If the appearance is of any concern and they are ultra thorough they may suggest doing a blood sample from you and baby’s dad

[Sda06]

Thankyou I do hope they are just being thorough and ruling things out. Hoping little girl is OK!!

[teezletangler]

I had echogenic bowel with my first baby. It can be associated with CF (they will test you and your partner) or Down syndrome, but usually it's just one of those things. They find a lot more thing then used to given the sensitivity of the ultrasound equipment now. Did you have any bleeding early in the pregnancy? Sometimes it is from the fetus swallowing blood.

Your consultant scan is likely to be reassuring! I had growth scans until 36 weeks because it can also be associated with growth restriction, but everything was fine and I was signed off at 36 weeks.

[Sda06]

That's reassuring thankyou, I didn't have any bleeding (that I know of) but obviously there could be something internal.
I'm hoping Friday will bring some good news

[Becs14]

Hi. Can I ask what happened then? Going through a similar situation now