Jermajestina

This past weekend my dad came out to visit. He accompanied us to a hospital outside Chicago, where we got to experience the most kick-ass thing imaginable: 3D/4D ultrasound. Okay, maybe it's only kick-ass to a pregnant woman, but it's still cool as hell. Bonus: I got to meet the perfume phenom who set the whole thing up, Parisjasmal (see her blog, Monkeyposh, at right). Since I've used the word "kick-ass" twice already -- you cannot grow up in Detroit in the '70s without "kick-ass" becoming part of your lexicon -- I'll use it again: Parisjasmal is kick-ass. She offered the service (via her kick-ass husband) gratis, and doubled our pleasure by lunching with us afterward. Not only is she kick-ass, she's kind, smart, funny, and almost unbearably cute. How many people eat their pickle with a knife and fork?

Not my fetus, that's for sure. As you can see from the picture above, all objects will likely be delivered from plate (ground, shrub, scalp) to mouth via grubby little fingers.

When my mother-in-law found out we'd had a 3D/4D ultrasound, she said, "Did you cry when you saw her face??" Greg and I were like, Cry? How can you cry in the face of such cool technology?

So, about the technology: just what makes it so kick-ass?

First, you can see contours and actually get an idea what the baby will look like. Here were my thoughts, in rapid succession, upon first seeing my daughter's face: (1) What the hell is all that crap in my uterus? (2) She looks just like my mom after a face-squishing nap. (3) She looks just like my brother Todd the-morning-after-the-night-before, when the aspirin has yet to kick in. (4) She has her father's semi-prognathic brow ridge. (5) She's so cute!

Second (and this is the part that turns my brain into a mobius strip), you can actually cut away chunks of the image just like you'd crop a picture using Photoshop, but what's left behind isn't a planar slice. What's left behind is the part of the body that would be revealed if you'd removed the undesired portion with your bare hands, like a sculptor. In other words, all contours are intact and you can see features that were previously covered up in the image. PJ's hubby hacked off the back of my daughter's head (okay, cropped it) and rotated the image to show us the backs of her eyeballs.

I know, I know: I've just blown your mind.

Getting to see a reasonable facsimile of the face your child will have after she's born is a trip. It also complicates things. Greg and I have been trying to narrow down our list of names, and now some of our top candidates don't seem to fit. Jermajesty is out for sure; likewise Jermajestina. Blanche, Mabel, Ethelda, Muffy: out. Even some of the Czech names on our list now seem ludicrous. I believe you need to name a child for the adult it will become, not the baby it is, but still, look at that face and think Zdislava. Doesn't work now, won't work 50 years from now.

Despite such minor challenges, the whole experience was, on balance, a tremendous gift. Now I can imagine my daughter's little knitted brow while she punches me from inside (using both hands). And I get to amaze my technophile friends and colleagues with the 3D images, thereby temporarily raising my status in Geek World. And now that I have a face to look at, I'm finally motivated to cut back on all the smoking and drinking.

And that's probably the biggest gift of all.

(Come on, people, it was a joke.)