It is an exciting time at our place. As you may or may not know, we are expecting our first baby in April. Yesterday, we had our first ultrasound. It was amazing. Those of you that have had the experience agree, I'm sure. I, as the father, didn't have much to do but watch and be amazed as the ultrasound tech rubbed the lubricated wand over my wife's belly.
The little girl, tentatively named Sophia, appears to be healthy, thank God. Two arms, two legs, heart, kidneys, bones, brain. We have a tape of the whole thing.
I suppose this is the paragraph where I am supposed to say something pithy or profound, but given that billions of men have fathered children, and probably at least millions have seen them via ultrasound, all my radical ideas regarding my baby daughter's ultrasound have already occurred to others. It is an experience to be lived. I cannot explain it to you if you haven't lived it yourself. Perhaps if I was a poet or creative writer, I could whip something up.
The best I can do is this. Before, the baby was an abstraction. Yes, I saw my wife's body change, and yes, I saw that she was sick and fatigued. That was real, too. But that was my wife being sick. The fact that a little aspiring human was the cause of it was something that I intellectually knew, but didn't grasp on a soul level. Seeing Sophia's very human form sleeping, stretching, rolling, bending within my wife brought it home deeply. All the new parent literature I've read so far has said the father feels like an outsider during the pregnancy and after the birth until the baby starts recognizing other faces weeks/months later. Not me. I feel involved right now. And I love it.
I love baby Sophia.
Check my homenode for a link to some ultrasound pix, if you're interested.