12 week scan, 1 week on

It's been one week since I saw my baby dancing. The image is prominent in my forebrain; it floats before me like a Shakespearian imp. I was speechless in the scanning room; but this was partly due to the uvulitis.

My wife had laughed at me when I said hello to her as I woke up. She couldn't understand what I was saying. When she peered into my mouth and exlaimed, "Oh my God!", I knew that something was amiss. There's a joke somewhere in this about having something large in my mouth causing me to gag, but I shall leave that for now.

And my wife jokingly accused me of never letting the attention be on somebody else: this was supposed to be her day, after all. "I know, I'm egocentric", I said. "What?" she replied. And so it went on.

So my wife was lying there, unable to see anything past the arm of the sonographer, her belly covered in a fantastically erotic gel, and I stroked her hand to comfort myself as much as anything else. At first we saw nothing. A dark oval of nothing, surrounded by science fiction. My heart missed a beat.
"There's your bladder," explained the sonographer. The relief was immediate and intense as she moved the scanner over a little and there, magically, was conjured the image of our little Bill. We've been calling it Bill the Bump for a while, nervous that this might anger the gods just like buying baby clothes too early might.
"There's baby's heart." I squinted and saw it. A little flash. And another. Something weird was happening to my stomach, something exciting and frightening, like waiting to jump out of an aeroplane.

I have never jumped out of an aeroplane. But I imagine the feeling is something exciting and frightening.

After a bit of prodding and poking, Bill got fed up and squirmed around, showing us its spine, its limbs. Its movement was quick and energetic. This was the ballet of the Tao. It was human and a dancer.

It's taken me a while to decide which pronoun to use. Although we've given the bump a masculine label, we don't want to assume anything about the gender of the child. So, calling it 'he' seems somehow wrong. Calling it 's/he' makes it sound like someone you'd see a documentary about on late night Channel 5.
I know 'it' seems inpersonal. But is this really such a problem? Is it safe to personalise the experience too much at this stage? It is the thing to call it 'Baby': "There's baby's heart". I like this. It's a neat solution.

So. I'm gonna be a dad. I hope baby will be into Doctor Who and stargazing. I hope baby will like trains. I hope baby will like reading. I hope baby will like poems, and stories.

I hope baby will like me.