![]() ![]() So it was with a distinctly geeky outlook that I booked a Platinum Package for my partner at Treasured Moments Ultrasound. People babies, on the other hand, look more like earthworms: squashed-up bundles of fleshy folds that are only vaguely reminiscent of the beings that created them. When otters, kittens, and horses are born they look like adorably proportioned versions of their parents. I am not the kind of person who can pretend to enjoy photos of newborns - if I was judging an interspecies beauty contest for infants, humans would certainly win last place. ![]() Tom Cruise was so enamored with an ultrasound machine that he bought one for unlimited home viewing of Suri while she was still inside Katie Holmes - it was a celebrity pseudo-endorsement that gave birth to the field of nonmedical prenatal portraiture. HD live is a marketing term that any sports enthusiast could understand. ![]() While you can certainly see how such high resolution could be medically helpful, it feels like this piece of advertising is aimed at expectant parents more than it’s aimed at imaging professionals. Where my parents only had a ghostly 2D prenatal view of me in the early ‘80s, my partner and I are able to look our fetus in the eye while she’s still swimming in amniotic fluid. We can assume that GE developed the Voluson line to improve prenatal health care, but no matter how clinical the operator might be, it’s still the first photograph in the history of the human being in question - and that makes it something of an emotional tool as well. A dark spot on a fetal belly might not look like much to a parent, but “anechoic” areas like these can be a sign of backed-up fecal matter in a developing intestine. It looks simple enough that a child could use it, but trained nurse-technicians and doctors are the only ones legally qualified to assess the resulting images for possible fetal defects. Eight glowing sliders, nine rotary encoders, and a built-in touchscreen are reminiscent of a tricked-out MIDI controller. An ultrasound wand is attached to a computer, monitor, and extended keyboard with backlit buttons that say funny things like “4D” and “3D” or just a pictogram of a woman’s naked midriff. GE’s Voluson E8 scanner is a beast of a machine that’s built to capture fetal development with unprecedented detail. ![]() Some other force was guiding its construction and it was difficult to attribute that force entirely to nature, as I do with most god-related questions.ĭoctors have used sonar-like sound waves to image fetal development for decades - ultrasound is typically used to determine gender, measure body parts, and view a baby’s first movements. Anti-abortion arguments suddenly became something I was willing to consider: although this was something my partner and I had created together, it was nothing any person could create with 3D printers or tiny Legos. My mom said the barely post-zygotic life form definitely had my grandfather’s brow line. Just 12 weeks after conception I could make out the two hemispheres of her brain and watch her suck her thumb. I’m not usually a “god” person but the first time I saw a 4D* scan of my unborn daughter I started to feel like something else was going on in the universe. ![]()
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