Doppler - Not Just For Tornadoes Anymore!

Close your eyes. Well try to imagine the following scene anyway. If you closed your eyes when I told you to you are kinda stuck. You'll never even get this far in the blog. Hopefully you figured it out and are progressing along nicely now.

You are at home watching your favorite show and the EBS tone keeps going off. That's the annoying tone the Emergency Broadcast System puts out to alert you that bad weather has been spotted, a child has been abducted, or they just wanted you to miss the most important 60 seconds in your show's history. It tells you all hell is about to break lose weather wise. So you dutifully turn on Channel 2 so Glenn Burns (Dagmar for you Justin) can tell you how bad it's gonna get and how bad the trailer park 20 miles west of you just got pounded. He brings up the doppler radar screen so you can see all of the pretty colors...actually I might need to watch in black & white because the colors sometimes confuse me.

Anyway, he tells you how doppler radar tracks the storm so you can get you and yours to safety. You come out of the basement to see the roof is still intact and all is well again. So when Emilee told me we were renting a doppler machine I was psyched. I mean what guy would not want a doppler, right? A mini weather station in my own back yard. I was thinking "what a great early Christmas present". SO, the doppler arrives, but the box is only about the size of a paperback. No big deal right? The Japanese have probably figured out how to shrink these babies for home use. Then Emilee opened it.

"Why are you opening my Christmas present? Don't you want to wrap it first?" I asked. Guys, has the wife/girlfriend/person in the car next to you ever given you the "how did I end up with this retard" look? Well I got it. And then I got a medical lesson because doppler is not just for tornadoes anymore...it measures the fetal heart rate.

That's right, it's a baby tracking machine. Many people don't know how doppler is used in the medical field. I had to look it up to see exactly how it works and watch ER staff use them often to find pulses. Simply put, it senses fluid shifts so those trained in its use can pick up a pulse wave. It is actually a pretty remarkable device in that way. It actually allows the user to find a pulse that would not otherwise be audible. We can actually (maybe if we figure this thing out) listen to the babies heartbeat.

So here we are at 10 weeks into the pregnancy and we have a new toy to track development. But give a guy some warning. I walk into the bedroom after a shower and Em is sprawled out on the bed covered in a clear liquid. I thought she had had some tragic lotion incident. But, she was just playing with the acoustic jelly that helps the doppler pick up sound transmission. I think she used THREE whole tubes of $97 per tube jelly just to find the "windy sound" that the placenta makes through the doppler. But then something much better than a tornado happened.

After about 10 minutes of playing with the thing, and me thinking I am gonna have to clean all of this up before I can climb into bed, we heard the pulse. Now it took some time but we heard it. At first it was tough to differentiate it from Emilee's pulse. But sure enough, there it was! We counted 164 beats in one minute. Exactly what it should be for this point in the pregnancy. It was amazing! Then E was able to position it so we could hear her pulse and the baby's at the same time. I don't think she saw it but it brought a tear to my eye. Or maybe it didn't. I am not admitting to anything the way some of you harass me. lol

I give Emilee some good natured grief about her paranoia in all of this, but I am not the one that has to do the heavy lifting. She has been a trooper. She has wanted this for so long and she made me want it too. When we first met, I was 90% sure I did not want children. Now I can't wait and I owe it all to her. I love you very much Emilee. I just hope I show it enough.

Stay safe,

Rob