Funky baby beats!

Photo of me by Martin Rondell

So there we were sitting with the midwife (a different one to last time) explaining (and feeling like apologising) that we didn’t get what were supposed to from yesterday’s scan, when she took us both by surprise by saying ‘so, let’s see if we can hear this baby’s heartbeat’.  Just like that, no warning, no warm up; nothing!

I had no idea it was even possible to hear the baby’s heartbeat yet, and I studied pre-natal development for three years when I was on track to be a nurse!  Em dropped her kecks for the fourth person in two days (not including me) and out came a little karaoke microphone (from a box the midwife had, not from Em’s kecks, although she does carry a lot of weird stuff, and always inexplicably has a box of matches about her person) and after a bit of rummaging around there it was, and very loud and clear it was too!

Em had been quite focused for today’s meeting with the midwife - there had been some confusion in her notes (over just how pregnant she really is, which was weird because I thought you either were or you weren’t), but once she heard that heartbeat she totally relaxed.  It’s a cliché to say someone ‘melts’, but I can’t think of any other way of describing how my lovely wife reacted to the sound of our unborn child’s heartbeat.

After a few strong perfectly rhythmic heartbeats the baby moved, causing a noise that sounded exactly like a Fender Jazz bass down-tuned to B being struck with a medium thickness Tortex plectrum, fed through a Electro-Harmonix Big Muff fuzz pedal.  But Emma disagreed for some reason.