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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Healthy so Far

OK, part of this is me playing around to see what I can do with embedding objects, etc., since I have never done such things before. The following is all of the ultrasound pictures that we received from a prenatal visit on Friday the 17th. Let me just back up and frame things as stating that even though this pregnancy is exceptional, there is just no way to experience the same emotion as being a first time father seeing your little unborn bundle of joy on the ultrasound screen for the first time. When Madison (our first) was in the womb, I remember all of the things we did as excited parents to be: there was the belly microphone so we could listen to the heartbeat, there was playing of classical music into mommy's belly, and I read every night. Much of the same is true for Kaitlyn (our second), but to somewhat a lesser extent. Now we lack intimacy on all levels (well not all levels, we did manage to get pregnant). Sadly, I haven't been talking to mommy's belly, or reading, or playing music. It might even be fair to say that I've been emotionally catatonic since seeing three little heartbeats at once on the ultrasound screen several weeks ago. Instead of focusing on how all of the joys of fatherhood will come threefold, I've been like a deer in the headlights focusing how all of the trials of fatherhood will come threefold and how all of the expenses will be threefold. But back to the ultrasound, even while we were at the Dr. office, there's so much excitement and a little trepidation going on withseeing three little ones kicking around. With a high risk pregnancy, the focus is on, "how are they doing? Are they OK? There's nothing wrong is there?" In which for this case, the answer is that all of the little ones are developing right on schedule: 12 weeks and 2 days, 3 days, and 4 days respectively according to measurements. 12 weeks 4 days is the actual, so they are all on track. The technician measured the skin at the back of the neck and apparently all three kiddos measured well, wich apparently is a good sign. All three babies have a healthy heartbeat, another good sign. Then there's things like the cervix is long, another apparently good thing. All three babies are growing in their own sack, another good thing. Everything that they could check for came out as a positive. The technician finished up and the Doctor came in. Basically the visit was a reaffirmation of allof the stuff that we had just observed, and that it was all good and positive. And then we leave, scheduling another visit in four weeks (at which time we should be able to find out gender) before going on our merry way.

But they give you a handful of prints from the ultrasound. And you take them home and share them with everybody you can. In this case, no one I know has ever seen triplets in utero. My mother and several of her friends have joined Facebook because they get a kick out of seeing the ultrasound pics. The first two times we had an ultrasound though, the pics were very telling: Twins were identified first time around, and then Triplets later that week, both visits resulting in a picture showing all of the growing babies in one shot. (Well they missed one in the Twins diagnosis, but that's beside the point.) Now though, I had a handful of ultrasound pics, none of which show all three babies together. That's not as fun as before, so what do I do now? I really didn't want to post a bunch of individual pics to Facebook, for reasons no more complicated than I just didn't want to post a multitude of pictures that don't do justice to the whole. Being a geek though, I used Microsoft Movie Maker to combine all of the pics into more or less a slideshow. I really didn't know what type of music to be appropriate, so I opted for no music. Anyway, I've come a long way to try and make my point.....

And that is after the sigh of relief in knowing that all of the babies are healthy, after being geeky and going through the lengths to create a slideshow, as I watched it happened...I connected. There's A and A has a heartbeat, and that's MY child. And there's B and C and they have heartbeats, and they are MY children. Are you boy or girl and what will you grow up to be? And you and you?

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