In about thirty days, my son will be born. Last week, my fiancé and I got the coming attraction at Med Life Imaging in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. For those not familiar with this establishment, it’s an ultra swanky ultrasound center where you go into a fancy room—resembling a high-end luxury suite—to watch your unborn child on a 52 inch flat screen TV.

As I said on many occasions, I’m old-school, “analog,” even. I like my VHS tapes. Imagine my surprise when I got to see a DVD of my baby—smiling, yawning and doing chest-breathing exercises—live from the womb! Didn’t quite get a clear picture of his meatballs and braciole, but the technician, Nicole, assured us that Megin and I are definitely having a little boy.

Nicole was not just some carbon copy technician either, she was a warm-hearted person, who truly seemed to care. Too often, medical practitioners tend to lose their bedside manner, especially when you are doing something very complicated. People are not robots, and although the equipment was high-tech, the “feel” that we got in that room was extremely comfortable, and Nicole was definitely professional and personable at the same time. She answered all of our questions and provided information that we could easily understand. That type of genuine personality is rare, but she enhanced the visit so much with her wonderful demeanor. The ambience was quite nice as well—from the soothing music to the leather sofas, which were quite relaxing…

Technology is pretty crazy—way to go GE—from the first fluorescent lamp many, many years ago, to this modern miracle machine. Safe, state of the art, and staggeringly stupendous! From the grainy black and white photos of the old days to today, these sonograms have come a long way, and this I won’t attempt to fight. How can you, when you are talking about such an amazing advancement in medicine. These pictures were like a 3D/4D, super duper, hologram, like I-Max or something—with no special goggles needed.

While all of this was indeed cool, the main thing is that the baby is healthy, and thank God, he’s got all ten fingers and toes and everything else seems perfect. Overall, the whole experience was pretty perfect. These types of things could be nerve-wracking, but I actually felt totally at ease. Hopefully I’m this relaxed when I’m changing poopy diapers.


From the Med Life Imaging website:
Unlike traditional fuzzy 2D images, using the GE Voluson 730 Pro/Expert allows us to gather information from three different angles to create a surface image such as your baby’s face. 4D ultrasound captures the movement allowing us to see your baby in real time doing various things such as yawning and stretching.