Name:  Jo Middleton

Age: 32

Children: Bee (15) and Belle (8)

Lives: Somerset

Likes: Gin & Tonic, Colin Firth, talking to Grown-Ups

Dislikes: Housework, poor spelling, playing 'shops' with children

On the bookcase in my dining room I have a row of photo albums. On the first page of the first album are two very special photos, but if I didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t know who they were. They are both photos of almost babies, black and white and slightly fuzzy, shots taken from a computer screen, through a film of cold gel. They are my first ultrasound pictures.

They say the moment you first see your baby, when it is handed to you after birth, are some of the most precious moments of your life, but thanks to the magic of ultrasound, it isn’t really the first time you see your baby is it?

Modern technology

When I look at the two pictures in my photo album, I’m always amazed at how quickly technology moves on. In the first picture, the spine is a white, solid but slightly smudgy line. The details of the rest of the body are visible, but not perfectly clear. In the second photo though, taken of my second daughter, seven years later, you can make out each individual vertebrae and the whole picture seems more focused – it’s like the pace of change has been captured right there on one page of a photo album.

For me, as for many would-be-parents, the first scan is the moment when it all becomes real. You see that not-quite-baby squirming around on the screen, and suddenly it dawns on you that in a few months time that blurry image is going to be an actual baby, in your arms, relying on you to provide for its every whim, 24 hours a day, for years to come. Scary thought isn’t it?

Time to adjust

Where would we be without it, if it meant that moment of realisation only came when the screaming baby was placed on our chest? I think I’d rather have some time to adjust - I’m a big fan of anything that can go even a tiny way to prepare me for the shock of parenthood!

Ultrasound also gives us the opportunity to find out whether we are having a boy or a girl. This is a hugely personal decision and I didn’t want to know with either of my pregnancies. You know so much already thanks to ultrasound, that the sex of your baby is the only real mystery left. I wanted to leave that one surprise intact as something to look forward to.

Nowadays of course you can go one step further and see your unborn baby in full-on 3D. I’m not sure how I feel about this latest development. I’ve seen some pictures of 3D ultrasound and to be honest, they all look the same to me – freakily large heads, screwed up eyes, tiny fat chins… But then, come to think of it, all real live babies look the same to be too, so perhaps the blame there lies with me and not the technology….

Jo Middleton writes an award-winning blog about the ups and downs of parenting at slummysinglemummy.wordpress.com