Babies and New Technology...

There is a wonderful story at Apprentice of St. Joseph about the ultrasound and accompanying photo of their yet-unborn child.

It reminded me again of the wonderful surprise we got concerning our eldest son...

Although my husband and I have been married over 25 years and always wanted a large family, it was not to be. After trying the various methods of increasing fertility (within acceptable practices, of course) to no avail, we had long decided it just wasn't in God's plan for us to have children. We accepted our lot and, while we considered adoption, found it was a difficult road for two such transient individuals such as ourselves to undertake. At one point we were actually qualified to be foster parents, but were strongly discouraged from thinking that it might lead to an adoption at some point...

At the time of my pregnancy with our eldest son (when we had already been married over 15 years) I was working full-time for a transit bus manufacturing company in the southwest. I was a program manager in the research and development department at the time, working long hours and traveling to Los Angeles every two weeks to check on the progress of a prototype bus build we had in progress. I can recall having some pains in my lower abdomen (which we later deduced to be the stretching of ligaments)... I discussed this fact with my mother, who was concerned that I could end up by myself, in L.A., trying to get to a hospital for an appendectomy or some such thing.

At her urging, I decided to go see a doctor before my next trip (which happened to be only one day away from my appointment). While there, the doctor talked with me about my symptoms and finally asked about the possibility of pregnancy. I laughed and said that I was quite sure it couldn't be, as we had tried to have children for years with no success, despite all the help modern medicine could give us. He asked that I humor him, so I (thinking we could at least eliminate that possibility) said, "Sure, go ahead and test me for it".

Not much later, he came back and said, "Well, let me be the first to congratulate you... you are pregnant."

At the same appointment, they got me in to have an ultrasound... being very cavalier about such things as my monthly cycles (and also having not a bit of morning sickness or any other symptom) I had no earthly idea how pregnant I was. From the ultrasound, we determined that I was already about 10 weeks' pregnant... I came home from the appointment with the ultrasound pictures to prove it. I went to see my parents, who lived in the same city where we were at the time, when they asked how the appointment went... I couldn't even speak for crying with happiness... I just finally handed them the ultrasound pictures of my little boy...

My husband was commuting to his unit in N. at the time and was in transit at that particular time... but when he called me later that day, he asked what the doctor had said... I told him I did not have appendicitis, but that I would have to start taking prenatal vitamins.

Dead silence on the other end of the phone... then the reality came through... great joy and excitement in our little family. I have a hard time understanding the dichotomy in our society... when a pregnancy is a much-awaited thing, there is no doubt (however early on the pregnancy) that it is another little human being there... yet, when it was not a desired thing, that same little person is considered a blob of cells? Especially with the advent of the ultrasound technology, and the visual evidence that there is a living - heart-beating - person, how can anyone justify abortion? That little person did nothing to cause his/her little life to be snuffed out for someone else's convenience, regardless as to how his/her existence came to be... OK enough soap-boxing for one evening!