Photographs

Every now and then as I stroke my son's smooth, pink cheek, I remember that this beautiful creature once lived inside my body, and I feel my mind's eye broaden again.

Lying across my chest, wrapped in his sling, my son's face indeed resembles some of the better ultrasound pictures taken before his birth. I vividly recall looking at those images, and looking over them again and again via the thin paper copies given to us, almost with disbelief that this face, this beautiful face, was living inside my body.

Read more about the joys of Motherhood. Other "Now I Know" columns include:

Introduction

Clutter

Distraction

Equal Parenting

Grandparents

Memories

Pain

Sacrifice

Preparation
Pride
Sentimentality

What a thrill, and how sad that parents before a decade or so ago were not availed of this incredible technology. Even today when ultrasound is commonplace, we are luckier than most, I guess you could say. Due to the high risk nature of my pregnancies, we are afforded as many ultrasounds as it is possible to squeeze into the tight schedules of my reproductive endocrinologist's and then perinatologist's offices.

In total, I think we had around twelve ultrasounds throughout my pregnancy. Twelve opportunities to peer into the future and try to know this little growing human. The first three images were not as inspiring with this pregnancy -- I had seen little peanut babies before inside my belly, their hearts beating rapidly as a hummingbird's wings, only to find a few weeks later that the little hearts had ceased pulsing life. That is why my eleventh week ultrasound was a tense event; on the way into the office, my husband and I remained emotionally frozen, refusing to believe that anything good would be seen. But there he was -- of course, we did not know "it" was a "he" yet -- an even bigger peanut with a gorgeous still-beating heart. We had finally passed the tenth week with a live creation.

The following ultrasounds were attended by a much livelier couple; we laughed aloud with the tech as the peanut moved its limbs. Still, once bitten, always shy, one might say. We reserved our purest joy for the second-level ultrasound, the fantastically in-depth imaging which accompanied my amniocentesis. Within seconds, our highly experienced perinatologist determined our child's gender as he swabbed my lubed belly with the machine's conducer. From this side, we could (with the doctor's help) make out the legs and feet which had tread daily on my ribcage. From this angle, tiny hands with curling fingers. Then, the face. From one viewpoint, all eerie shadows in a skull-like image; but from another, cherubic details seeming to stare at a camera's lens. I wondered if our son was watching the walls of his home fold in, slide around him, and recede again as my doctor bore down on and traced my belly. After the fun and incredible relief of all this, I couldn't bear to watch further as the amniocentesis began, knowing fully the risks associated with inserting a very long needle into my womb's contents. The usual anxious waiting period revealed all was well, and we told the world about that face we had seen.

I guess it goes without saying that I kept a copy of every pre-birth image made of our son. They are just as priceless to me as the hundreds of feet of videotape and 35 millimeter shots which he now graces. I will keep these shadowy, black-and-white photos as reminders, not only of who I, with fully-acknowledged bias, refer to as the most beautiful baby in the world, but also of our feelings along the way to seeing his precious face in our hands.

"Now I Know" first appeared on Moms Online, part of the Oxygen Media network (http://oxygen.com), and is reprinted with permission.

Now I Know

The Treasure of Photographs