We Have Contact!

by Chris

So last night Cindy called me upstairs to join her.  Something exciting was happening.  She was using the PLS (that's a prenatal listening system for those not down with all the newfangled baby lingo) that Sarah gave us and she had found a heartbeat.  Very cool.  So there she was lying on the bed with this device strapped to her lower belly, and headphones on her head.  She handed me a second pair of headphones and the two of us lay beside each other listen to our little mans heart thump and beat away.  It was incredible.

A quick history of bearing witness to my sons heartbeat.  The first time was at the first ultra sound where I saw the heartbeat, which looked like a little blinking star in a very tiny galaxy.  It was pretty cool.  Then we heard it the first time we met our midwife Abhir.  Then I saw it again at the second ultra sound.  But this time was different.  This time it was just the two of us, free to take as long as we wanted to lie there quietly eavesdropping on a new life.  As we listened, my mind drifted off to thoughts of what he might be when he grows up... what kind of personality he might have... will he be a hit with the ladies?  All that kind of stuff.  Then after about ten minutes, a thought struck me.  Here we are just listening to this tiny, tiny little heartbeat, we should try sending a message back.  And this is where things got really cool.

I started lightly tapping on Cindy's tummy.  One... Two... Three.  Then we waited and... heard something tap back?  Maybe.  Then Cindy tried.  One... Two... Three.  And then we definitely heard a thump back.  For the next fifteen minutes one of us would tap and then he would tap back.  A couple of times it was a full call and response, with him mimicking what we had done.  At one point I started drumming the opening drum roll from 20th Century Fox, in preparation for his first screening of Star Wars.  He seemed to enjoy that.  Well, if you can interpret a quick little thump, thump as a sign of enjoyment.  Anyway, at five months and one day Cindy and I have made first contact with our son.  We had a brief and unintelligible communique with our boy and for my money it is one of the coolest and most incredible moments I have ever had in my life.