3D Miracle Ultrasound

So, Dawn and I are thrilled to announce that we are expecting a little boy in August.  His name is Dylan Kainalu.  The ocean is near and dear to our hearts and has special meaning for both of us since we grew up in Hawaii.  We hope our son shares our love of the sea.  His first name Dylan comes from the son of the God of the Sea and Kainalu is Hawaiian literally meaning ocean wave, figuratively to go with the ebb and flow, easygoing, which, we hope will be his Mana or spirit.

This past month, Dawn reminded me to work my schedule around the ultrasound which she scheduled with The Baby Connection. Well, an ultrasound, so no big thing, right? I mean I've seen about three ultrasounds of Dylan already and they're all pretty hard to make out. If I had a little buzz going or was in the right frame of creative mind, I could see some sort of a baby, but mostly it seemed like I was interpreting Rorschach images in a Psych's office, not that I've ever done that before.

Okay, she sends out invitations, yes, invitations, and 8 of us show up in this comfortable, leather couch room with a large flat screen monitor on the wall. We're not at a doctor's office, but at The Baby Connection, a business that specializes in 3D ultrasounds. No, 3D glasses and popcorn were not required, nor provided, but popcorn would have been cool. I wasn't thinking much about it until the first pictures started showing up on the monitor and then I got a glimpse of our son moving around and opening and closing his mouth. OMG!…Wait, this is my blog…Holy Shit! Un-freaking believable! There he is in 3D and moving….free diving without a tank in Dawn's belly. Leaky? Oh, you better believe it! It was all I could do to not burst out in front of these people.

Thanks to the amazing technology of 3D ultrasound, we were able to share glimpses of our little Dylan with family and close friends.  This was no Dreamworks, baby. This was the real deal and he was right there moving around. Dawn had a smoothie and some chocolate about an hour earlier so he'd be extra active and it worked as he moved around. In looking at the live video, we watched in amazement as he moved his hands by his face, open and closed his mouth and made facial expressions that really helped us to feel like we already know him.  The still shots are incredible.  Below you can see one of our favorites, our little man making a heart with his fingers - unbelievable!  Feels like he's already trying to communicate to us.

Yes, that is 100% real. There is no Photoshop here. His little hands miraculously made the sign of a heart in the picture above. 

And then it really started to hit me as I began to see myself too. No, not the pool cleaning guy, but me as a little boy. Take a look at this picture below of me and compare it to the one above.

Bobby Mitchel, circa. 1964

It's no longer a little baby in there, but now he's just Dylan, our son, whom I already know. Hey, Dylan, looking forward to meeting you in person soon. :)

and hey, Baby Connection! You guys rock!


Mahalo for 3D-ing with Captain Bobby Mitchel