Baby appears on screen

23 weeks

We're early. Very early. Although the car park is already full, the
ante-natal clinic has a stillness about it I would never have
anticipated. This is the NHS, under-funded, chaotic, over-stretched,
useless. And yet nobody is here banging on the doors, waving petitions,
threatening to go to France instead to have their baby. The place is
empty.

We walk on our reflections across the polished floortiles towards the
sign that says Ultrasound. The hospital is like a city. On our way
here, we passed a through no-go area - dark corridor, scarred walls,
cold concrete floor - which suddenly opened out into a bright yuppie
neighbourhood - I think there may even have been carpet; there were
certainly Ikea spotlights warmly illuminating department store floor
plans. Enjoy your visit! There's a Forbouys selling Hello! and Dime
bars, there are cashpoint machines. And the traffic is as bad as it
would be on the streets of any city; milling with pale people in
dressing gowns and unlaced shoes. We're blessed to be on hospital
business and yet to have nothing wrong with us, I reflect.

The Ultrasound department is empty as we drop onto our plastic seats
and wait, admiring the still life photos on the walls - ferns and
daisies and a droplet of water on a tongue-like leaf. You're early, the
receptionist eventually tells us. Five hours early. The appointment is
at two. We don't do abnormalities in the morning, we are told, and I
wonder if she is referring to me or H-J. But we're admitted anyway.
They can do the scan that's not internal now. We'll have to come back
in the afternoon for the other one. I am startled by this display of
flexibility. From the media hysteria about NHS awfulness, I imagined it
would have taken several minutes of sharp breaths and finger pointing
to negotiate ourselves into this position.

Within moments, a translucent creature is doing somersaults before us.
H-J's grip tightens excitedly around my hand. This reptilian being is
Baby. Not 'the baby', but Baby. That's Baby's head, says the slender
woman with just a trace of cool in her voice, as she rubs the magic eye
over H-J's tummy. She is casually dressed in trousers and a black
jumper (there's no uniform), and we like her because last time she said
Baby was a real show-off, and we secretly adore the idea of our child
being a bit of a crowd-pleaser. There's Baby's hands. She addresses the
screen on which Baby is making its third public appearance. Baby's
heart. She reads out some measurements to the woman on the other side
of the small room who punches a keyboard in response. Baby's kidneys.
They're both fine. Baby's tibia. Another number is called out and
digested by the computer. Baby's eyes. Baby's mouth. Ahhh, Baby's
smiling!

And I wait to be told something's wrong. I have not really reflected on
what today is all about. Already the pregnancy has become a part of our
lives. The euphoria of finding out has subsided. Sure, there is still
excitement, we still flick through the books, we even went shopping
together for baggy clothing, and we had a look at a buggy. And I spend
ages waiting for a kick. But we no longer think about the pregnancy all
the time. Personally, I haven't considered until now that we might be
the unlucky ones. Maybe Baby's too small, maybe Baby's limbs are
mutated, maybe Baby's heart hasn't got all its chambers.

Oblivious to my concerns, the toy missile darts across its play area,
squelching through the gel like a child sliding in mud, and it takes
Slick Chick back to a pulsating sack, beating like the frail new body
of a TV-documentary chicklet in its nest. The heart, she explains. And
my own heart misses a beat. But it's okay. Baby's fine. Baby's doing
very nicely indeed. I watch the heart pumping against the wafer-thin
membrane in which it is maturing. I am reminded of the timid movement
of a reptile's internal organs against stretched clammy skin when it
spots a predator. I am filled with a fatalistic awareness of how
vulnerable Baby will be when unleashed from its water world and
delivered into the brutality of civilisation.

But those concerns are buried by my sense of awe at the beauty of what
I see. There is more to Baby than there was when we last entered into
its world. Then, so it seemed, Baby was little more than head and
spine, the bones of latter arranged in an awesome ladder formation, the
precision of which I have not seen since I was a child myself, when I
visited the dinosaur section of the Natural History Museum. Now we see
hands, suspended above Baby's head, no purpose yet to serve, fingers
spread out and motionless, nothing to grip or touch, to point at or
pick or poke. And if I wasn't so retentive I would cry at the mastery
of nature's work. As Baby gently rocks, its arms sway like branches in
the breeze. Baby is waving to its Ani and Bopa! I'm doing very nicely
indeed!

When we see It next, Baby will have a sex. It gave a good flash, the
camerawoman confides, I couldn't avoid noticing. But we tell her we
don't want to be told. I don't know, opening its legs in front of a
camera?.