Put Your Name On An Ultrasound: Fill & Download for Free

Back in the days before ultrasounds for predicting the child’s sex were commonly used, most doctor’s attempted to predict other ways. Often by how the mother “carried” the baby or how much weight she put on, etc. Not really scientific but not uncommon. Due to these “great” predictive methods in the US at the time, 2 out of 3 of the doctors my mother saw told her I would be a boy.Dad was elated. A son! Someone to carry on the name, continue the family tree, prove his manhood, etc. etc. So, of course, I was to be named after him. Larry Jr. My father’s legal name is Larry, not Lawrence, by the way. I was going to be Larry R Lord, Junior.Then the big day came, and surprise! Not a boy. Dad wasn’t particularly happy, to which the “lovely” doctor offered to put me back in and try again for the right results.Mom offered we could call me Lari, a feminized version of his name. Dad didn’t like that, a reminder of the fact I was NOT his son, and then what would he name her next child who “would by god be a son?” So mom decided to call me Lara. Still named after my father, but IF (at this point a BIG IF) they had another child and it was a boy, they could still call him Larry. It was kind of my mom’s way of having her way and thumbing her nose at my father’s sexist attitude, and kept him from whining he couldn’t name a son Larry. Kind of sneaky and passive-aggressive, but how it happened.So contrary to what most people think, I was not named after a character in a novel (Dr. Zhivago) but my father. And I wasn’t named so much as an honor to my father, as a slight.

“Now, let me see that giant vein.”To set the mood:Fort Sam Houston, 1990.I’m 18 years old, in training to become a medic.Doctor is an attractive female, and she had to be in her first year attending or still training.One of the classes we received was how to self check your testicles for any abnormalities. I paid attention because my testicles are pretty important to me. Well, there was a vein going to the left one that was as big around as a husky pencil. I'm pretty familiar with the twins and let me tell you, this was something new. The next day I took my instructor aside and explained what I had discovered. His response of -”Oh damn! You better go see a Doctor!” Was all I had to hear. The next morning, I went right to “sick call.”When you sign in, there is just one line to write on. You put your name, last 4 of ssn, time in, unit, and a little space for a brief description. I wasn't sure what to write, and kind of embarrassed, so I kind of whispered to the guy what my problem was. He was like, “Okay, I'll take care of it.” Guess what he wrote? “Huge vein- L testicle”. Gee thanks! I could have come up with something better than that.I sit and wait. They call me back. Tell me to strip down to my shorts. They get my height, weight, temp, bp and all of that good stuff. Then he tells me to wait for the Doc.I'm sitting there, in my little tightie-whities, except they are army issued brown. And suddenly there is a knock and the door swings open. 4 Doctors walk in. One is this very young , very attractive female in a lab coat over her camouflage BDU’s. I mean she was hot. If I had seen her in a club, I would have definitely asked her to dance. One Doctor says to her , “go ahead.” And he motions to me.Everyone got a chuckle as she stepped up to me and said-“Now let me see that giant vein.”Well, everyone but me. I wanted to crawl under the table I had been sitting on. I did get her back though.A few minutes later as she was cupping my left nut and asking a series of questions, she said-“Does it hurt when you ejaculate?”It was her turn to turn bright red when I replied-“No mam, it feels pretty good.”Of course, the three other Doctors began to chuckle again. I'll bet she heard about that exam for quite a while.If you enjoyed this, check out another story from when I was a medic in the Army:Fred Spender's answer to What is the most ridiculous thing that you have ever convinced someone to believe?***New Material*** I just remembered this:About 12 years later, I was still in the Army. Now, I am stationed at Ft. Riley, KS. I had just returned from Kuwait, and about to process out of the military. Part of the outprocessing is a complete physical. I figured now would be a good time to check up on the ol’ swollen vein.This Doc decided to refer me out for an ultrasound.*TIP*- If you ever get an ultrasound of your testicle, ask them if they can warm up the gel first.The tech was a real nice guy, and somehow the conversation drifted to my original exam. That must have been one of the funniest things he had heard in a while. He had tears dripping down his cheeks and his face was bright red.(I tell an even better story in person.)I noticed he was snapping still images for the Doctors to analyze. I suddenly got a great idea. I asked him if he could print out images like the ones of the little babies. He said yeah, they usually do that for the expecting parents. I asked how much it would cost to print one of my junk. He said printing me one would be the least he could do after the laugh I gave him.He printed a good one for me that had both testicles in it. In the left corner, he printed something like this:Spender, Fred. 123–45–67891st trimester“Little Fellas”*looked somewhat like this.I had a great time going around showing everyone the twins I was expecting. I don't know if you have ever seen an ultrasound of a real baby. I can never make out whatever they are telling me the image is of. I had people agree the one on the left looks like he is smiling at you.We had a different type of sense of humor after spending some time in the desert. I'll have to admit, it was really funny when I showed it to my in laws. My wife and I were still dating at the time.

I will go ahead and tell you a story that happened to me just recently. A patient showed up to the ER with abdominal pain. She was in her 30s. Although she had already had a child, she vehemently denied having any idea that she was pregnant. She still denied being pregnant after the ER physician performed an ultrasound showing her a baby. The ER physician declared that she was 7 to 8 centimeters dilated and sent her up to Labor And Delivery (well she was actually 4–5 cm but that's close enough for an ER physician who hasn't done an obstetrics rotation in decades and I was proud of him for trying).My ultrasound showed a baby that was likely full-term. At this point she admitted she knew she was pregnant, but she knew that her husband was not the father. She had not told anyone she was pregnant. She declined an epidural and delivered naturally (I believe she was trying to keep the epidural out of the hospital bill) and requested that the baby be immediately put up for adoption.She told her husband that she had a hernia repair surgery. She requested to be discharged later that evening.Here's the thing, if you have a baby while married, the law assumes that the child is your husband's. I often have patients who are still married attempting to put their boyfriend's name on the birth certificate. They are not allowed to do that as long as they are legally married, and this is a common source of tears and frustration. I can only assume this is why the DCS worker showed up at her house the following day with a police officer in tow. I guess they required his permission to put the baby up for adoption. Now they are keeping the baby.This was a confusing situation for us. Secondary to the Safe Harbor laws, you are allowed to surrender a baby at certain locations (hospital included) without questions asked. If she had just had the baby at home and brought the baby into an ER and dropped the baby off, legally, the police officer should not have been allowed to contact her. We all felt that they were on shaky legal grounds to show up at her house the way they did. What if her husband killed her? What if he abuses the baby knowing it's not his? But of course I can see the other side of it, husbands should not have their children adopted away without their consent. Tricky.A surprisingly high number of pregnancies are of uncertain parentage. A very common question a patient will ask me at their prenatal visit is "so… when did I conceive?" This is usually their attempt to determine the father. Depending on the gestational age at the time of the ultrasound, I can narrow the conception date down to within a handful of days to a handful of weeks. No matter what, if you have sex with different people a few days around your conception date, no amount of narrowing it down is going to help.I am aware of paternity testing that can be performed prior to delivery although I have never had a patient use it or be able to afford it. More commonly this waits until after the birth of the baby. This is usually the time the boyfriend gently taps me on the shoulder and says "uh…so when can we get the test?"I already know which test they are talking about.