Ultrasound

In a little over an hour, we'll go for an ultrasound. Well, Rachel will go for an ultrasound, while I sit there and try to look useful. Pregnancy is kind of an odd practice in teamwork--there isn't a whole lot I can do until October, the doctor's aren't particularly interested in my body, Rachel's the one who undergoes all the changes and does all the work, yet it's 'our baby'. I feel a little bit guilty about taking some of the credit while she does all the work and has to deal with all the physical repercussions. Not that I can do anything about it...

I digress a bit. We'll go an ultrasound, a machine I know next to nothing about that magically (as far as I'm concerned it may as well be magic) grants images of Rachel's womb and the child growing inside. I keep trying to wrap my mind around the entire process, and maybe the image of a child will help inform how real it is, but it still feels like a bit of dream we're wandering around in. I'm not even sure it's my dream, and I don't know at what point it becomes real (maybe when the kid is a month old and I haven't slept 4 hours in a week, perhaps?), but it's as though I've intruded into some alternate reality where everything has changed despite the fact that nothing has changed. Doesn't make much sense, does it?

And yet, I have no problem forming dreams and hopes for this child. I have no problems praying for this child, that it may grow as a disciple. It's unreal, and yet so very real.

This week the child is apparently forming knees, and it's fingers are still webbed but growing longer. (Some day, if it's like my dad, the child will go and buy gloves with webbing in order to help it swim faster. I'm guessing it would prefer this rather than keeping the webbing that is currently there. But who am I to presume?) Miracles keep happening, moment by moment, cell by cell, and what was once the union of two cells is now an immensely complicated individual, with neural pathways and flexed wrists. The debate about when life begins seems so absurd to be laughable, if it were not so tragic, when things like knees and fingers are considered.

I am terrible at waiting. And yet, in the midst of God's miracle that is being performed inside my wife's womb, I wait in awe and wonder at what God is doing. I am humbled, excited, thrilled and terrified. And there are still many months to go!