Reaching Out

Here is what happens when your wife is pregnant: when you go to CVS, in addition to buying such normal items as sponges and milk, you also buy a stool softener for her constipation (it is what it is, which isn't always pretty), a long-handled shower brush for when she isn't able to reach everything anymore, and a can of mixed nuts to help keep her vegetarian protein levels up.
We had our third visit with the obstetrician on Tuesday. She was in her 15th week(1). That's early in the second trimester. We will continue to see this doctor every four weeks for a few more months. I say "we" because I've attended all three so far. From what I gather, the standard is usually for the man to attend the first visit and then the big "anatomy" visit somewhere around the 18th week, when they do the only important ultrasound and you learn what the gender is. Sara is happy to have me at these visits and so far I've been happy to go, even though the last two have mostly been simple check-ups, consisting of "how are you feeling?" a weight check, and a quick look for the fetal heartbeat, followed by answers of any questions or concerns from us. I'm pretty sure I'll be skipping at least the next visit with this primary doctor. The big anatomy visit, conducted by a separate doctor in a different facility, is in just two weeks, and though we're going a little early so I'm worried we won't be able to find out the gender, I'll be attending that one for sure.
There was really an amazing amount of excitement leading up to our first visit, when Sara was only 6 weeks along. Probably unsurprisingly I'll say that I was waiting for some confirmation at that first visit because it didn't seem totally real yet. The doctor brought out the ultrasound and, not knowing what to expect(2), I was actually a little unimpressed. The doctor didn't hesitate calling it a baby when looking at the black circle in the sea of grey noise on the screen. She moved around the internal ultrasound probe, and the black circle moved around and sure I could see a few whiter smudges or streaks inside the circle, but nothing comprehensible. Finally she stopped moving it around and got out her pointer, making tiny marks on the screen in a couple spaces and claiming that she could see the heartbeat. Now, I was sitting across the table about eight feet from the screen, so I didn't see squat, but then she printed out the image and gave it to us. Sara framed it, naturally, but I still didn't see squat. I'd hate to say it was disappointing, because I had no real idea what to expect, so maybe I'll go with "underwhelming." There was nothing human in that image, and barely anything biological, only if you had an active imagination.
The second visit was different, both in my expectations (lower) and the results (wow). This time, the doctor did the more classic external ultrasound, and after some brief abdomen searching, there it was. A very noticeable fetus(3). It seemed almost implanted to the edge of the black circle, like it's back were pasted to it, and the head and neck were pretty distorted, but it had an honest-to-goodness body. The real kicker, though, was the arms. They were fully extended, like grabbing for something. By this time, with Sara at 10 weeks pregnant, I'd seen a lot of ultrasound pictures online. I don't think I ever saw one with outstretched arms. For me, those arms were important. Without them, the image was still mostly inert and abstract, but with them it became animated and very human. For the first time, I could see it and imagine that it was something, that eventually I would be able to touch it and speak to it. Pretty great.



1. I just learned that you don't say it like that, you count it like you do a person's age. So in her 15th week, she's just 14 weeks along. As of today, she is 15 weeks pregnant. 15 weeks and zero days, though you don't say how many days. Anyway.
2. My aggressive online research-gathering hadn't yet begun at this point.
3. Let me be extraordinarily and unnecessarily political now. As a pretty staunchly pro-choice individual, I think I'm going to try to stick with the nomenclature of "fetus," instead of lapsing into calling it a "baby." This will be difficult to sustain, so forgive me and try to remember the intention I'm laying out now. Pretty much the only logical (religious concerns are never logical) argument for a pro-life stance is to draw a hard line around the killing/life issue. So for you to call something that doesn't have independent life a "baby" would be misrepresenting it. Sure, if you have no intent of aborting it, then eventually it will become a baby, but so long as it's in the womb it's still a fetus. So that's done then.