Heartbeat

It's strange for me to think that some people have to hear the heartbeat before they commit to carrying their pregnancy to term.

Whether or not I heard my child's heartbeat at the OB appointment last month would not have determined whether or not my wife and I would be in a delivery room in March. It was just a nifty bonus.

Not even seeing the ultrasound at the end of this month is going to determine anything other than provide us with a souvenir to add to the baby album.

So it's weird to think that something as innocuous as that would be the one factor that would determine a child's life or death. Seriously, lives are hanging in the balance over something so...expected.

I suppose people have forgotten that all living mammals have cardiovascular systems. If they didn't, they'd be dead.

Oh...now I get it.

I used to lay next to my mother at naptime and listen to her heartbeat. It was soothing.

Before I kissed my wife for the first time, I was profoundly aware of my heartbeat and the pulse in her wrist as we held hands on the bridge over the Grand River.

When the OB slid that little microphoney thing around, there was lots of static. I didn't expect to hear so much static, but I very much was straining my ears to detect a heartbeat.

What else do you expect to hear emanating from a womb? Violin concertos? a tap dance number? silence?

Silence would mean...well, I shudder to think what silence would mean. I was overjoyed not to hear silence in my wife's womb. Are there truly people in this world who feel the opposite?

It's essentially a glorified stethoscope. Its sole purpose is to help you detect the presence of a cardiovascular system in operation. If you never listen for a heartbeat, you can tell yourself there was never a heartbeat there to hear in the first place.

And, oh, what you'd be missing.

Evidence of love. That's what I heard in my mother, in my wife, in my heart, in my daughter, in her sibling: love. Why would you want to close your ears to love?