Output Stream of Consciousness

Dena found this one outfit in town that did "3D Ultrasound".

The concept was pretty interesting: getting a decent idea of what your baby will look like, while it's still in the womb.

If you haven't seen regular ultrasounds, there is a lot of activity on them, but the sound penetrates quite a bit, giving slightly disturbing images like a "zombie baby face" since the ultrasound is showing quite a ways into the nose before you can see other facial bits. See Dena's prior posting for our baby on a 2D ultrasound. That's a great thing to send to relatives, but what if you want to spread even more pre-love? 3D seems like a pretty nice way to do that.

What does the 3D trick entail, I wondered, on the way to the clinic? Is it a special kind of sound?

No. It looks to be essentially a computer derivation from a 2D ultrasound series, which is still a pretty good trick.

They do packages of DVDs and CD-ROMs. You can bring your own music for the background of the DVD. We thought we would take advantage of that, but when it comes right down to it, that's a really hard choice to make. Do you really want The Imperial March in the background? Relax? Baby Poo by the Arrogant Worms? We wimped out and went with their Baby Classics that they had handy.

Our baby was interfering with the ultrasound, as usual. He had the cord and his hands in front of his face, and decided it would be a great time for a snooze. Jumping around a bit and poking him didn't really work all that well. Our time slot was half-over, but the technician was definitely intent on getting us some good pictures, even if that required re-scheduling. There's a bit more impetus to make sure you get what you came in for in the pay-for-play business, which is... well, good :)

Our baby did at last show a little bit of his tiny mug, which was a relief.

Well, a picture of any sort is certainly worth 1000 of my words, so without further ado, here is a reduced-size series of our womb denizen:

In a few of the pictures, you'll see fuzz on top of his head. That's not hair. He's just wearing the placenta like a hat :)