The First Scan: Baby is Real!

The end of the first (spew-ridden) trimester presents the first opportunity to see your bun in its oven.  I understand that with private health cover this would occur in the swankiest of obstetrician's offices.  However, despite Wifey and I upgrading our private health cover in preparation for its possibility, we were blessed with pregnancy 3 months shy of being able to take advantage of the benefits (due to a 12 month lay period).  By these circumstances we found ourselves sitting this morning in the waiting room of a public diagnostic imaging clinic.

This was not quite the romanticised scene that has been portrayed in so many films.  Rather than sitting alongside fellow expectant parents, briefly meeting eyes in nervous moments of understanding (before looking away again, quickly and awkwardly, pondering once more if your scan would reveal the two-headed mutant you'd been fearing); we found ourselves dodging coughs and avoiding the vacant stares of our growing ageing population - by far the youngest two in the room.  These things aside, the clinic was fresh and new and the ladies were surprisingly chipper, considering the slow-yelled conversations that were required to work out what name they were supposed to be entering into the computer.

So the moment was upon us: we were in the booth, Wifey's shirt was up and the cool gel had been applied to her stomach.  Wifey had even managed to break out of her regular morning routine of heaving her guts up to keep down the litre-and-a-half of water required in the previous hour for a clear result.  Though, despite the never-ceasing "morning" sickness and four positive tests, I couldn't shake the nagging thought that there was just the slightest possibility that when the probe touched the skin it would reveal...nothing...and we would be left embarrassed and crest-fallen, running from the building like a Liberal MP from Parliament, trying desperately to dodge the judgement of the assorted elderly patients in the waiting room (who would have had no idea what was going on anyway and wouldn't have cared if they had).  Such is the wild, irrational thought process of a young man immediately before the moment of truth.

A second later the probe touched down:

I expected at that moment the ceiling would crack and approximately 1000 kilograms of bricks would tumble down from above.  However, the effect was almost the opposite, as the weight of uncertainty was lifted and we stared down (or up in Wifey's case) in semi-disbelief at our human-looking foetus!  Arms, legs, head, spine and nose were all in the right places and the heart was beating at a merry 143 beats per minute.

Wifey and I had both dreamt on numerous occasions that there was a party of two dining in her uterus, but those thoughts were put to rest as it was quite clear that all available space was occupied by one.  With all this displayed on the screen in front of us, it was difficult to believe that our little beast was just shy of 6cm long - capable of reclining quite comfortably on a cheese cracker!

So the deed is done and there's no getting out of it now.  We bid farewell to our little baby-in-waiting for around 7 weeks until our next scan, at which point we can work out what colour the baby room needs to be painted!  Hopefully in that time we can actually make moves towards obtaining said baby room...