Jan 6
So I discovered this new blog, called Babble.com, which is an amazing blog with many very interesting articles for pregnant women.
This article caught my eye. It’s about a woman who brings in a cardboard cutout of the dad into the delivery room with her when she gives birth to her baby. Her husband is deployed overseas, and I guess he was not allowed to have leave from his deployment to come home for the birth of his baby.
The article can be found here, and I have included it below.
A woman who went into labor without her husband in town decided he should be there anyway – so she brought a cardboard cutout of the baby daddy into the maternity ward with her.
Her son’s first pictures will include daddy – sort of.
Emily Marsh’s husband is a Marine serving overseas. Flat Darrell is his stand-in, originally sent her way as a joke during their engagement. The sort of tool used by many military families to help their kids bridge the gap while their real parent is gone, the life-size cutouts are also know as Flat Daddies.
But they usually spend time with little kids who are missing their parents. They’re not used to introduce a newborn to said parent.
Fortunately Emily Marsh is not crazy. Just a woman missing her husband who has a good sense of humor. Darrell will get to meet little Walter in June, she told the Charlotte Observer. Until then, he’ll have to make do with pictures – sort of like his son.
The original news story was first reported in the Charlotte Observer.
At First Peek Ultrasound, we have enough space in our ultrasound room to fit 10 to 12 people. We can also fit up to 10 to 12 cardboard cutouts of the baby’s dad and his entire military squad who may also want to attend the event of seeing your baby for the first time in 3D. Now, even his battle buddies in Iraq or Afghanistan will be able to virtually attend this beautiful and breathtaking event.
If your husband / fiance / partner / boyfriend is deployed overseas with the military, to Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else, feel free to bring a cardboard cutout of your baby’s dad to our ultrasound studio. Not only will we not make fun of you, your cardboard cutout daddy will be able to “see” your baby live in 3D on our two large plasma television screens while standing comfortably near you. And you can get an extra CD of pictures to send to your loved one overseas for no extra charge.
At First Peek Ultrasound, we have had quite a few military moms come in, and a few of them have had the dads deployed overseas. A 3D ultrasound is an excellent way of helping Dad stay connected with the baby and the pregnancy process in spite of him being so far away. At First Peek Ultrasound, we can provide a DVD of the entire ultrasound session that you can send to Dad. Also, you can upload your 4D ultrasound movie onto Youtube, so he can see it from anywhere in the world.
Are you pregnant with a Dad who is deployed overseas? We would love to hear how a 3D ultrasound helped him connect and bond with you and your baby through your pregnancy.
Many people ask us how to get the best pictures on their 3D ultrasound. We have included a number of tips below.
If you have any additional tips, please write them below in the comments.
In the largest recall of the industry, the Chicago-based 3D ultrasound studio, First Peek Ultrasound, has declared a nationwide recall of its 3D ultrasounds.
First Peek Ultrasound will recall over a thousand 3D ultrasounds, the company’s largest recall, to address problems with certain 3D ultrasounds that may be too cute to publish.
The owner of First Peek Ultrasound was found leaving the ultrasound studio, crossing Lake Street in Oak Park, IL, wearing dark sunglasses and a stethoscope to get away from the media. When pressed for a comment, he said:
It was never our intention, when we first started this company in 2008, that pregnant moms would be sending their baby’s 3D ultrasound images en masse over the latest gadgets and technology, such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and sites like baby-gaga.com and The Bump. We thought moms would just quietly show their baby’s pictures to other moms at a baby shower. Now, you can’t visit a pregnant woman’s Facebook page without being barraged by her 3D ultrasound pictures.
Experts in the field have stated that these “too-cute-to-publish” 3D ultrasound pictures and 4D ultrasound videos would cause internet accelerators (folks who do nothing but check out blogs and post the articles on other blogs) to get stuck and lead to a crash of the world wide web.
“The cuteness factor of the internet could accelerate out of control, leading to envy, malicious posting, and other bad things,” the AAIAAIA said (American Association of Internet Advisors And Industry Association).
The recall will involve popular ultrasound packages such as the First Peek Package, the top-selling 3D ultrasound package in the Chicago area, and the Gender Check, the best-selling 2D-3D hybrid, and the Premium Package, the “Lexus” of 3D ultrasound packages.
First Peek said it was still working with officials to find a remedy to fix the problem and said customers of First Peek Ultrasound could be notified about the recall as early as next week. First Peek spokesman, Sarah, said that until the company finds a fix, owners should take out the removable 3D ultrasound images from the main profile pictures of their Facebook page and not replace it.
AAAIAAIA (Another American Association of Internet Advisors And Industry Association) said that it had received reports of 103 incidents in which the internet may have become stuck on the Facebook pages involved. It was unclear how many led to crashes, but the inquiry was prompted by a highspeed crash in Chicago of a First Peek Ultrasound’s 3D ultrasound image being forwarded out of control on a personal mommyblog. As the cute baby pictures hit speeds exceeding 8000 kilobytes per second, the pregnant mom made a frantic 404 call and said the internet was stuck and they couldn’t stop the cuteness. The website was immediately pulled off the internet with a grinding halt.
“This is an urgent matter!” First Peek’s safety and recall manager, Josef, said in a statement. “For everyone’s sake, we strongly urge owners of these 3D ultrasound images to remove their cute baby pictures that could lead to unintended internet acceleration.”
3D ultrasound image that caused the first crash in Skokie:
3D ultrasound that led to the high-speed crash in dowtown Chicago:
Another less noteworthy recall that happened to involve Toyota, which was eerily similar to First Peek Ultrasound’s recall.
Should your 3D ultrasound be recalled? Please email us your cute 3D ultrasound pictures from First Peek Ultrasound to be included in our 3D ultrasound gallery.
Sep 15
Every once in a while, we get a question as to whether 3D ultrasounds are safe. As a board-certified pediatrician, I have a bias towards making sure things are safe for the baby, and I researched the safety of 3D ultrasounds extensively before deciding to see my own baby in 3D when my wife was pregnant. As a father, being able to see my baby through this window moved me so much, that I felt like I had to bring this experience to others.
Just to set the record straight, 3D ultrasound uses the same ultrasound waves used in your doctor’s office, with the same intensity, and for the same length of time. In 35 years of widespread almost universal use of ultrasounds, there has not been a single known case of a miscarriage or abnormality attributed to the use of ultrasounds. Its safety profile has been proven over the decades.
This being said, I do want to deal with a few arguments here. Also, I am so sure about the safety of what we do that I will open it up for discussion here on this blog. If you have any research or factual evidence on 3D ultrasounds being unsafe, then please bring it here. If you prove to me that 3D ultrasounds are unsafe for either the mother or the child, I will be the first to close down this studio and be on the forefront of shutting down all the others as well.
The arguments that are not valid are as follows:
“We just don’t know about the safety, and it is not necessary, so we should avoid it.”
That argument can be used for cell phones, microwaves, and a thousand other things and dismisses the very real benefits that pregnant women get when viewing their baby while pregnant. Also, it is impossible to prove something is 100% without any harm. We can only prove if there is a harm. The best we can hope for is a long track record of use without any known harms, which already exists for ultrasounds.
“It is not medically indicated.”
Who said this is a medical procedure? Seeing your baby for the first time while you are pregnant is an emotional, social, and cultural phenomenon that is spreading and soon taking over. Baby showers and bar mitzvahs are also not “medically indicated.” Also, just to point out the hypocrisy of those bringing forth these arguments, there are ob/gyn physicians who strongly advise against 3D ultrasounds because they are not medically indicated and yet perform elective circumcisions on a routine basis (also not medically indicated), perform elective C-sections for social reasons or to fit their own schedules (also not medically indicated), and even will allow their own patients to come back for an extra 2D ultrasound, off the books, to see if it’s a boy or a girl. It makes me wonder if the real issue they have with 3D ultrasounds is that they are not making any money off of it themselves and begrudge those who do. Meanwhile, there are plenty of ob/gyn physicians who have set up their own 3D ultrasound clinics across the U.S. after they have retired from their regular role as a physician.
“This is not what this medical device was intended for.”
It is a curious state of affairs when GE’s official policy is that the 3D ultrasound machine is not intended for non-medical or entertainment purposes and yet on their website and on all of their brochures, a picture of a pregnant woman seeing her baby in 3D is prominently displayed (and she is not wearing a medical gown). What irks me more is that major advances in 3D ultrasound technology and 3D ultrasound techniques have grown out of the increased use of this machine by ob/gyn’s and ultrasound technicians, spurred by the demand of these elective ultrasounds. You can’t have it both ways, GE. You can’t have your biggest clientele be 3D ultrasound studios and yet declare publicly that you have no idea that these machines are being used in this way.
But assuming that the above statement is true, that 3D ultrasound machines are not being used “as intended,” this still is not a valid argument, as most medical instruments have been used in more ways than as intended. For example, the stethoscope is intended to be used by a physician or nurse to hear heart sounds. However, as a pediatrician, I have used my trusted stethoscope to hear arterial blood flow in a baby’s head to diagnose an AV fistula. No one chided me for using the stethoscope as something other than what was intended. I have knocked it against a child’s knees to test for reflexes; I have used it as a toy pendulum to distract an infant as I examined his ears; I have held it outside my car window, using it as a signal, as I rested on my horn, and sped through red lights reaching the hospital just in time to resusscitate a blue baby just born who wasn’t breathing. I have worn my stethoscope around my neck as part of my uniform and clothing so as to indicate to others who was running the code. I have used that same stethoscope to hold my seat at the hospital cafeteria. I have used it as collateral when I needed money to eat and my paycheck wasn’t going to arrive until the next week. I have tried to use it to hypnotize someone, swaying it back and forth in front of my 2-year-old son, trying desperately to get him to sleep, but it didn’t work. I have even once used my stethoscope as a short-range weapon when stationed in Iraq (don’t even ask me about that one!), and I now have it hanging in my closet as I currently use it as a reminder of my crazy past. Ultrasounds were never meant for medical use to begin with–they were initially used to find cracks in dams. It was a doctor who decided to use it to detect abscesses and other things within the body which led to how it is used today. At that time, you could have told the doctor that it is not being used as intended, but I am glad no one did.
The FDA advises against it.
The FDA knows that there is no evidence linking any harm to the use of 3D ultrasound, as stated on their website, and so they are not legally allowed to ban 3D ultrasounds. They can say that this is a medical device used for non-medical purposes. But I can also easily say that this is a non-medical device sometimes used for medical purposes.
It’s not natural.
Yes, using a 3D ultrasound machine to see your baby has not been done in the more natural state of things during the caveman days. However, it is very natural for a woman to want to see her baby, bond with her baby, and these feelings begin while you are still pregnant. It is also very natural for a father to want to experience this joy as well. From the beginning of time, cavemen dads have been putting their ears up against the cavemen mom’s belly, using regular sound, not ultrasound, to hear their baby’s heart beating. The 3D ultrasound is just a natural extension of these deep desires.
Also, just as it is not natural to drive or fly by airplane, we do many things that are in retrospect very natural when you consider the other animals that can run as fast as a car or fly as high as an airplane. Likewise, there are many animals that employ ultrasounds to communicate and navigate through their world, including elephants, dolphins, and bats. When the tsunami hit Indonesia, it was natural ultrasound signals created by the tsunami that warned the elephants to flee from the shoreline moments before the tsunami struck. It was the humans who followed the elephants that benefited from these natural ultrasounds.
Do you have an argument against 3D ultrasounds? Do you have research or evidence showing that it is unsafe? Please write it here in the comments.
Although we have standard music placed in the background of the DVD of your 3D/4D ultrasound session, many customers ask if they can bring in their own music. You certainly can bring in any music you like, on a CD, or on any MP3 player.
Some of our customers have asked for recommendations for music.
What music did you have recorded on the DVD of your 3D ultrasound session? What music would you recommend?
Having your friends and family get instant access to your baby’s 4D ultrasound movie is simple and surprisingly quick. Upload your movie onto YouTube and you can let anyone in the world watch your baby in 4D. Or you can keep the movie private on YouTube as well, allowing only those with a password to watch it.
Uploading your video onto YouTube is mostly straightforward, but for your convenience, here are the complete instructions to upload your 4D ultrasound video onto YouTube.