Baby by Cezanne

Last week, as threatened, I got a free ultrasound. It was great. I wanted to be sure before we started telling people that there really was a baby in there, and as I hadn't even heard the hearbeat at my 11-week midwife visit, I took advantage of the free ultrasounds the university offers to make sure everything still looked okay.

(Of course, apart from my office, we still haven't told anyone. This weekend my mother-in-law will be back from her oriental jaunt and we'll tell all the folks. Looking forward to that. Last Sunday Mum was regaling me with thrilling tales of the upcoming residents' committee meeting and saying "So, I'll fill you in on how it all goes next week." "Ha-hah", thought I, "we'll have something much more interesting to talk about next week.")

Anyway, the ultrasound. The woman on the phone when I booked it said "Drink a litre of water in the hour before", so like a good little patient, I tried my best. I drank three of the four mugsworth of water that I estimated to be about a litre, and then I had to stop because there was just no more room. When we got there I was practically hopping up and down as I filled in the form, so the lovely student who was in charge of me said "We'll just take a look and if it looks big enough to see I'll let you go to the bathroom." So I got all gooed up with nice warm gloopy stuff on my tummy and she took a look.

There, under the bulging, bobbing black blob of my bladder, was a baby. No longer just a pea-sized blip, this was an actual baby shape. Cool. Then the teacher came over, had a look, and decided she could let me go to the loo. Ah, the relief. I tried to only go partway, but really, once it started there was no stopping. I went back to get re-gooped up, and this time the view was definitely fuzzier, lacking the intervening liquid that helps define things (somehow; I really have a very vague idea how it works but I don't feel the need to think about it too hard). It was like looking at an impressionist painting too close up - you sort of had to squint and half look away before you got an fleeting idea of what you might be seeing. (I was slightly annoyed on behalf of our lovely student at this point, becuase the teacher came back, looked at the fuzz for a minute and then said "Hmm. You shouldn't have let her empty her bladder." On the other hand, if the silly lady on the phone had just said half a litre, or a slightly full bladder, then things would have been clearer. I'll know next time.)

As we watched the snowy image we realised that the baby, which had been head-down before, had flipped over while I went to the loo and was now upright. As we watched, he (/she/it; we said "he" at the time just as a shorthand, because "it" is just too impersonal)sort of wiggled, and stretched his limbs, and jumped up and down a couple of times, as if having a whole-body hiccup. It was amazing, and hilarious. Then he put his hand up to his mouth (probably sucked his thumb, if he takes after his mother) and faced forward and down, as if to say "Okay, show's over. Bye now."

It was sooo coool. Really. We were all giggly and elated afterwards, I think because it was so different from the previous ultrasound where there really had just been a peanut-shaped blob that turned out not even to be the baby but the sac the baby was in. This wasn't a raspberry, or a goldfish, this was an actual baby, all baby-shaped and moving cutely.