Thoughts on the Five-Month Ultrasound

We had our second, possibly final, ultrasound on Friday. (More precisely, Betsy got an ultrasound and I watched.) The kid is a boy, as I mentioned Saturday.

It’s strange. The whole thing is strange.

First of all, ultrasounds are magic, it’s that simple. It’s technology and science that causes the magic, to be sure, but that doesn’t make it any less wizardlike. Think about it: they can pulse sound waves into a woman’s abdomen and create a three-dimensional real-time moving picture of an unborn human. We are living in the future, there’s no other explanation.

Surprisingly, though, the picture at 21 weeks is not as good as the picture at 10 weeks. There’s a lot more information, yes (gender, for instance), but because each picture is a cross section, and the baby is so much bigger now, it’s hard to get a single snapshot that shows you the whole kid at once. The one above isn’t bad, though.

The ultrasound took about an hour, and the nurse was great. There are a million things they have to check for, and she explained it all as she went: making sure the hands open sometimes (non-opening hands are a sign of Down syndrome), measuring the femur, counting bones in the hands and feet, and so on. I’m sure she’s done this a thousand times before, but she still made it sound like it was interesting to her (and hey, maybe it was). And she answered all our questions.

It’s weird knowing it’s a boy. On the one hand, it makes the kid seem more like a real person, which is good. On the other hand, it makes the kid seem more like a real person, which is bizarre. This is actually going to happen, evidently.

Also, for some reason, we’re finding it much, much harder to pick a name for a boy. There are a zillion girl names we like, but our shortlist (read: full list) for boy names only has four possibilities. And one of them is a long shot.

What are they? Well, I suppose I could share:

• Agamemnon
• Radagast
• Jα§ρer
• Palpatine Iscariot III, Jr.

Five months down, four to go.