the money shot

Today I experienced something I'll likely never see again - the real-time ultrasound of a 4-and-a-half-month-old baby. I've seen pictures of such things, of course, but it's nothing like watching the eerie staticky white image of a moving fetus. It flinched, it moved its arms. I saw its spine, its kidneys, stomach, brain matter, eyes, 20 digits; all four chambers of its heart, beating at about 160 beats per minute; and then its tiny mouth began chewing, or sucking. At about 4 inches, it is a pretty good replica of a typical E.T., with its wide, blank eyes still at the edges of the skull.

Jill didn't want to know the sex of the baby but wanted me to know. The original plan was that I would be able to see, and I was sworn not to tell either her or her husband Brian. I can be trusted with secrets, and I hold many of them. Mostly I can be trusted because if I can't share a good story, I quickly lose interest and forget. But this wasn't something I would ever forget.

I kept telling Dylan that this was his sibling, but he (at 19 months) is hardly interested. When the doctor swooped in, he asked immediately if Jill wanted to know what she was having. Jill had changed her mind since we'd first discussed it, and said "YES!" The doctor positioned the wand so that we were looking at the creature's bottom. "Here is the anal area, these are the legs..." It was obvious to me what we weren't seeing there, and after a while, a little tweaking of the position of the wand - voila! labia. There's no mistaking labia. Those of us who have been lucky enough to gaze upon such beauty know this. Okay, anybody that gets porn spam has seen their share, but get the hell out of here. We're talking about my good friend's daughter-to-be.

So it probably wasn't a good idea to say, when Brian had finally arrived and had been suitably informed, "Yep. It's a girl and that's the money shot!"