Thursday, July 20, 2006

The Miracle of Ultrasound

I saw a picture of my new grandbaby today, and I'm in awe. The technology may have existed when I was pregnant with my oldest, but doctors certainly didn't do ultrasounds as a matter of course. I had one when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, but only at the very end of my pregnancy when they were trying to decide whether to do a C-section or not. So seeing a picture of my grandchild (who, according to the midwife is vigorously active) in these early weeks is mind-boggling. Even more mind-boggling is the fact that I could actually see her (or him.) Usually when I look at ultrasound pictures, I make a lot of mmm-hmmmming noises and pretend that I can see arms and legs and other body parts. But today, I saw a head and I saw a leg. Either ultrasounds are getting better, or I just had more incentive to find the body parts in the gray cloud! The midwife says everything looks good, for which I'm profoundly grateful, and my daughter can now stop worrying that maybe there's something wrong with her that only seems like a pregnancy, and really begin to absorb the fact that there's a baby on the way. Baby Smiley