10 Routine Prenatal Procedures You May Want to Refuse

There are so many tests and procedures that are routine during pregnancy that an expectant mother can begin to feel like a lab rat. Unfortunately, many of them are inaccurate and unnecessary. Fortunately, any one of these can be refused by the mother. Here are some things you may want to know to help you decide what procedures you wish to give consent for--and which ones you'd rather avoid. Refusing these tests decreases your risk of infection and can make your pregnancy more comfortable.

1. If you are high risk for STDs, you may wish to be tested for them. If you are monogomous woman, have no doubts about your partner's cleanliness, have been recently tested, and/or don't share needles, razors, etc., the chance that you have an STD is minimal. Most cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV. If you've had one recently, are low risk for what it detects, and/or have always had normal results, you may want to refuse a pap smear.

2. If you are high risk or are having symptoms, you should be cultured for vaginal infections. Only 9% of pregnant woman in the US will contract BV. Yeast infections are common, though. Either way, these are easily treated with antibiotics, have minimal effect on the infant, and present themselves in symptoms such as odor, discharge, itching, or burning--giving ample time for treatment before birth.

3. Many ob/gyns don't even perform urinalysis anymore, so this is a sign of how unnecessary it is. It is done as a preindicator for gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, as well as to test for urinary tract infection and kidney problems. The vast majority of the time, most of these problems will cause symptoms that your doctor is trained to recognize.

4. A check for anemia is unnecessary if you are following a healthy diet, are low risk, and aren't having any symptoms. If you were anemic, you would feel weak, tired, and have various other problems. Rather than have a blood test, supplement with iron to see if any improvement occurs. If it does, you have solved the problem. If not, you aren't anemic.

5. The gestational diabetes screening is unnecessary unless you are high risk, are having symptoms, have diabetes or have had GD in the past. Fasting all night, then drinking liquid sugar, isn't healthy especially during pregnancy. It is also uncomfortable and inconvenient. There is a high false positive rate, so you may need to fast then sugar shock your body again during a 3-hour test--just to find out you're fine. Only 1/3 of women who test positive actually have the condition, and only 5% of pregnant women develope it. If it's not causing any symptoms beyond the positive test, it probably isn't that severe.

6. If you are low risk for rare genetic disorders, you may want to refuse the test. If you have tested negative in the past for genetic disorders such as Tay-Sachs, you do not need to be tested again ever. DNA does not change.

7. If you are low risk for birth defects such as Down Syndrome and/or would not terminate if you were carrying an 'imperfect' child, you may wish to refuse the Triple-Screen.

8. Amniocentesis and CVS are extremely invasive and increase your risk of miscarriage. It is not worth losing a perfectly healthy child to find out its gender or if it has a birth defect.

9. Ultrasounds can be very useful for diagnosing problems that require treatment during or immediately after birth. If you are high risk for these, may be carrying 3 or more babies, or are having irregular pain or bleeding, you should have one. Otherwise, you may wish to forego this procedure, despite how hard that may be. On the bright side refusing one may make you more in tune with your baby's fetal movements, forcing you to rely on intution to bond!

Ultrasound uses intermittent sound waves to create an image. It is new technology that hasn't been tested for very long, meaning its safety isn't proven or disproven. Remember the problems X-rays caused before we realized not to use them on pregnant women? During ultrasound, fetal movement increases, a possible sign of distress, and the temperature in the womb rises, which can be harmful to the fetus. The sound waves bouncing around can be extremely loud and possibly damaging to the infant's ears. Multiple ultrasounds have been linked to speech delays.

Additionally there is a high rate of false positives for problems, which can cause unnecessary anxiety and even dangerous interventions that are equally as unnecessary. There is also the chance that a problem will be missed. This gives the expectant mother and her doctor a false sense of security about the baby's well-being and may make them less apt to notice indicators to the contrary.

10. This is probably the hardest procedure to refuse, and yet this is the most potentially harmful test done despite its popularity. Doppler uses sound waves that bounce around in the uterus to allow heartbeat monitoring. These sound waves can be damaging, more so than the ultrasound as Doppler is constant--not intermittent. It only detects problems that cannot be prevented or treated, making it unnecessary and risky.

Refusing these tests lowers your risk of STDs by not allowing yourself to be poked with needles or have anything put into your vagina. You are also decreasing your risk of vaginal infection by refusing a pap smear and culturing, which can push bacteria from your vagina up towards your cervix. Some of these procedures are just unnecessary and inconvenient, the only real reason to avoid them. However, some are potentially harmful and haven't been studied enough to tell if they are truly safe. Whatever procedures you chose to have done during your prenatal care, do your research first. Please decide on an individual basis where a test is necessary and/or worth the risk for you! Keep in mind that just because you refuse a test at one point doesn't mean you can't change your mind later on if you start having symptoms.