Ack! My Wife's Ultrasound Was Very Stressful for Me

We went in to get an ultrasound today since my wife is pregnant. At this point in her previous pregnancy she'd already had two, so this seemed like it wouldn't be very difficult. But she's a little older now, so the perinatal clinic at Meriter requires us to get "genetic counseling." Honestly, I probably shouldn't have gone. I should have just stayed home with the kid and let Monica go on her own, but I went - I want to see my child. I want to know the sex (And isn't it "sex?" Everyone at the clinic was saying "gender." I thought this was settled a few years ago. Unless they were going to tell me something about the choices the baby was going to make about clothes and which restroom the baby will want to use then they should say sex.). Anyway, I went.

The very nice lady counseled us for half an hour in a small room with a beat up old three ring binder with drawings of chromosomes. She took, very skillfully, our family history. She showed us a table of risk percentages for down syndrome and overall genetic problems. Wow, they certainly do go up after the mother gets to be thirty years old! My wife and co-blogger is 36. Then we sat in the counseling/scarifying room for fifteen minutes while they got the ultrasound room ready or whatever they had to do. Keep in mind I'm entertaining a three-year old the whole time.

Eventually we got to go into the room where they do the ultrasound. So we continued to wait in the ultrasound room. The tech came, he wore a collared shirt and very nice glasses - no scrubs - and he rubbed the jelly on my lady's belly and started the ultrasound. The ultrasound tech said, "I can't tell you anything except the gender and point out the parts of the body." Certainly all the parts of the baby were there. It took nearly forty-five minutes. He asked Monica to get up and go to the bathroom to help the baby move around. Then he gave us the pictures of the little darling. We waited another 10 minutes for the doctor. The doctor came. She was a very nice lady. So by this time, the initial frightening session was two hours in the past. I was ready for answers. Amelia was ready to go home or do anything but be in that dark room with the computer monitors. That's when the doctor mentioned something about "umbilical artery" and "we used to think that this might be a sign of heart problems" but... Amelia started screaming and whining, and she opened the door to go out. I jumped up and grabbed my daughter and shouted at her. I brought her back to the chair next to Monica in time to hear the doctor say, "...perfectly healthy baby. I don't see anything of concern here at all."

Why did we have to go the genetic counseling/scarifying session? I still don't get it. I just want to say again that the doctor said that the baby is totally fine, but why did they have to spend so much time preparing us for some remote possibility. It was just stupid.

But I do have a picture of my new baby girl.









P.S. I typically find these "4-D" ultrasound pictures creepy, but that obviously hasn't stopped me from posting it.