What prevents a Buffalo Shot?
So, I’m a bit remiss in not posting this like IMMEDIATELY after I got home on Friday (or live-tweeting it, if I were an obnoxious mommyblogger with an i-phone) but on Friday last, I went in for the 2nd trimester ultrasound where they investigate whether the baby’s spine is in good tick, how the blood-flow is looking, if all of the brainmeats are forming, etc. This is the ultrasound wherein they can tell you if you’ve got a son or daughter pending.
The way I chose to announce it on Facebook is as follows:
“I know what I’ll be up to in the very near future.”
So yes, the sailor suit will have shorts rather than a skirt. Joel and I are completely excited to bits and pieces and are totally looking forward to all of the family adventures ahead of us.
Anyway, you may wonder what lead me to open this entry with a MST3K clip. Well, when the ultrasound tech said that she could tell it was a boy (she said, “Whoa! This baby is definitely a boy and not shy about it.”) She took a photo of the ultrasound while the lad was quite casually exposing his scrotum for all viewers to admire and then, the kindly ultrasound tech superimposed some text just above the baby’s thigh which reads, “it’s a boy!” and printed it out for us. I wasn’t really bucking for a photo of Baby’s First Fruit Basket, but I have it, so, um, yay, I guess. In the first ultrasound wherein they did the Nuchal Fold Translucency exam, he kept mooning the camera. So, what I’m thinking here is that he may take after his father in a humor-laden attitude toward his nether regions. Oy.
Anyway, as we were walking out of the doctor’s office, I mentioned something to Joel about, I wasn’t sure what to do with the “buffalo shot” image, and then had to explain to him the term “buffalo shot” which culminated in my singing the Pants song for further elucidation after I provided the formal, technical definition.
I’m not going to post that ultrasound pic, as I consider it in highly dubious taste to begin with, and I figure it can wait until this kid has his own Facebook account before blurry and unpleasant groinal photographs hit the Internet. (Actually, I hope to train this tendency out of him before it could become a worry!)
In any event, I am going to share one ultrasound photo with you, because this one was the one I thought was the coolest of the lot.
This, as you might be able to discern, is the baby’s spine. You can see some of his tiny little rib bones, and the back of his head. This was what I went in there to see. I went in there with the thought of “Let There Be Backbone.” I wanted confirmation that everything had formed and sealed up correctly, and here it is, one perfect, intricate little spine. So. Freakin’. Cool. Yeah, it’s a little creepy, but it’s also pretty damn fascinating.
Just some little twirls of DNA have been bossing around a whole bunch of proteins, minerals, and whatever other fantastic elements into making a whole new human, which, though it can be explained and described scientifically, strikes me akin to a sort of magic nonetheless.
The great science experiment continues. Nice skeleton building!
Glad to hear everything is progressing at it should. Yes, it DOES sound like he takes after his father!!