Ultrasound

The world you have inherited, expectant parent, is one of mystery and obfuscation — a world of cheap advice, Amazon wishlists, continuously changing scientific recommendations — as frustrating and confusing as any world presented by today's means. But nothing will twist your mind more than the image created by the helpful ultrasound machine.

Wicked enough was the plastic pregnancy test purchased at whatever grocery store or discount retail mart. Three were required just to trust the pink lines, blue squares, red dots, etc. Equally wicked were the contradictory rules offered by myriad pregnancy manuals available at the local book megastore or given helpfully by friends. These are all proven out-of-date or just plain wrong by the Greek chorus spilling knowledge in the WebMD chatrooms.

The ultrasound marks the half-way point, for those unfamiliar with pregnancy.

By this point, the pregnant body should be somewhat comfortable with itself, its small argonaut now hiccupping, burping, swimming loop-de-loops on the end of its umbilical tether. Hormones, emotions, midnight cravings have, if not leveled off, at least become familiar. At this point, the Truth has fully set in: there is something inside that domed belly, something that can no longer be denied or ignored by either anxious parent.

At this point, expectant parents will grow tired of hearing: "Is it a boy or a girl? Do you know? Do you want to know?" accompanied by a smarmy smile that is either cruel or envious. Soon they dread the ultrasound scan.

What kind of technology is this, anyway? How healthy is it to have your wife and your child "sounded" like some kind of fricking geothermal gas pocket? The kid's not made of coal, for God's sake. Who invented this? Who tested it? My mom laughed at me and said, "Oh, they X-rayed my stomach when I had you." I was X-rayed? Irradiated in the womb? Safe as those X-ray shoe-sizers that gave all the kids skin cancer on their feet? What kind of medieval quackery is obstetrics and who's to judge any of it legit? Why do people like Naomi Wolf have to publish books? Why did she have to make it worse?

But they also want it. Parents who say they're waiting until birth to know the sex of their child are soulless demons. They spit in the face of human accomplishment. They're the kind of people who can let the phone ring and not answer it; the sort of people who drive five miles below the speed limit on congested two-lane roads; the sort of people who push the "Left Behind" series on you at work.

So the expectant mother lies down on a gurney in a dim room next to a machine that looks something like a high school multimedia cart, and a small, bony woman gently pushes the shirt and stretch pants away from her round belly, unceremoniously spooging a mess of clear jelly out of what looks like a fast-food ketchup receptacle onto her bellybutton. The mother gasps at the ice-cold substance, which must be kept in a refrigerator just above freezing to produce this effect, and then relaxes as the woman raises the flat head of the microphone device, pushes it against her belly button, and begins sliding it around her domed belly.

The pregnant woman can't see the black monitor above the computer which interprets the ultrasound data; the husband sitting in a chair in a corner of the room, out of the action, can. What appears is something like a moon-landing film: a triangle-shaped viewing area filled with smeared gray lines that could as easily be lunar landscapes as his wife's womb. The technician alternately moves the microphone device and taps on the keyboard, which contains several joysticks, number pads and roller balls and looks like its true purpose is editing film.

Which I realize is what we're doing.

As various gray/black shapes swim into and out of view, the technician freezes the screen, makes notes, saves it and moves on. I become aware that I can't make any sense of what I'm seeing and I'm glad she can.

"Excuse me," I say. "Would you mind explaining some of this as you're doing it?"

She pauses heavily, the flat microphone head coming away from my wife's skin, and makes a point of turning to look at me.

"When I'm done, I will go over the pictures with you. I can't do two things at once."

"OK," I say.

She turns back to the screen and again the motion-blurred lines fill the slanted black frames.

I understand now. The technician is the tribal medicine woman, the repository of knowledge and spirit power. Small, dry, bony – the old woman who throws the bones and casts our child's future. We are waiting in the dim buffalo-hide teepee, the tools of her trade making the only light: smoldering fire, burning sticks scratching in the dirt, smooth stones, pieces of animal bone, flickering light reflected in her brown bird's eyes. She hums quietly to herself as she works. Focus. This is the new magic.

The pregnant mother is already attuned to the secret knowledge: the argonaut speaks to her at night; the argonaut rolls and kicks, taps out codes against her warm organs. I am part of none of this. I lay my head against the domed belly and hear nothing but the things I have always heard, which connect the two of us – heartbeat, breathing, her skin against mine.

The technician uses the joystick to position a crosshairs, clicks, positions again and measures the distance between two points. She does this several times. Finally she sits back, then reaches up to turn the monitor toward my wife. I move to the bed so I can see.

"The baby keeps moving," she says. "I'm trying to catch it."

The argonaut knows. I blink.

"There," she says. She looks at us. "Do you want to know the sex?"

We do, so her thin finger points to the screen, and she traces what we're seeing. She draws a long curve that is the belly, another that is the baby's profile. An arm and blurred hand. There is a sudden perspective shift, she draws a V on the screen, and I realize we're looking up through the baby's legs. She points out the sex organs.

A boy.

In the next shot, the profile changes, the baby has turned and the woman smiles like a birdwatcher catching a rare sighting. Simultaneously, the machine is printing his picture.

"He's looking at us," she says. "Do you see?"

We do.

— James Stegall (james@sonewmedia.com)