Museum, I love you.

I have cried in many places- libraries, the back room of the ICU, the front of the ICU, the exercise room in Shatford, cars, closets... well, you get the picture. I have left trails of salty tears in many unique places.

I don't think I have ever before cried in the children's hands-on section of a museum. Until last Saturday.

A friend from work happened to have two free passes to the local museum which she passed on to us. And my dear husband agreed to set apart a Saturday morning and afternoon to take me there on a date. (I love dates with activities besides eating and movies- he makes my heart melt when he takes me to the zoo. Two days ago he simply offered to take me on a walk while we ate popsicles. As we slurped our way around the neighborhood I felt like the most cherished wife!)

Back to the point. The first exhibit we stopped at was pictures of different types of bacteria. I amused myself for a while by covering up the bacteria names and having Josh guess what they were. Lame? yes. Did we laugh? Yes. Next we moved to, (Drum roll please!) the children's activity room. Hands down, these sections are always our favorite. Today's exhibit was medical equipment. We completed a knee replacement, used a microscope to examine live cultures from doorknobs and keyboards, opened the chest cavity of a child mannequin (to discover he didn't have a heart- LAME!) and then, there it was. An ultrasound machine.

No way. There is NO way it works. There is no possibility that today, on this random and free date, I will see my child for the first time. I told these things to Josh as he sat before the machine and began turning knobs and dials. It wasn't working. I told him it wasn't going to. Then he had his moment of brilliance. The ultrasound probes weren't plugged in to the machine. He remedied that. He held the probe to his hand. It sure looked like an ultrasound of his hand. "Here Ericka." He gave the probe to me. I looked around, pulled up the stomach of my shirt, and gave it my best guess as far as placement.

I was still looking at my stomach when I heard Josh. "There's a hand!" With awe and such a feeling of complete wonder, I looked at the screen and saw my baby. There it is. There is its hand! And its head! And kneecaps and feet! And boy, it's an active little thing in there! I can't believe I don't feel it moving more often. Needless to say, this is where the tears come into the story. I can't believe, on this day that I was never expecting, this day that was a random, thoughtful gift from a coworker, I had the privilege to see my child. (To all you curious people out there: we weren't able to see if it is a boy or girl. I am a nurse, not an ultrasound technician.) Regardless, it was the most beautiful thing I have seen in my life thus far.

The rest of the museum was kind of a blur. I remember seeing a mummy without toes, gems from Brazil, Grecian urns, artifacts from Iowa's history. We saw the largest gold nugget ever found (worth over 3 million I think it was), extraordinary fossil samples, and costly Chinese shrines and statues. But my heart and my thoughts were back in that children's activity area, with that ultrasound machine that probably wasn't actually supposed to work, when Josh and I saw our precious baby for the first time. And the coolest part? The most wonderful and precious thing in that museum was our baby, and I got to take it home with me.













Ultrasound for $7.50 anyone?