Ontology Recapitulates Phylogeny
Anthony Strallen cowered behind the diminutive OB tech and watched warily as Edith waved a tube of Aquasonic 100 gel at him menacingly. This one was unopened and likely to leave a mark, whereas the other one she had hurled at his head had been nearly empty.
Thank God.
While it was tempting to chalk his wife's rage spiral up to pregnancy hormones, the disgusted glares of the OB tech, and her reluctance to serve as a human shield, led him to believe he might have stepped over a line. Slightly.
"Edith...darling...please calm down..." he began soothingly. The effect was spoiled by his undignified yelp when she slung the tube at him, grazing his temple. When she snagged the doppler from the bedside tray, the tech finally intervened.
"Please don't throw the doppler, Lady Edith," she requested calmly. "Its really rather expensive."
"What should I throw, then?" Edith asked brightly.
Anthony pivoted his eyes between them and then glanced at the door. When nobody came through to investigate the chaos, he swallowed hard and interrupted the quiet conversation between his wife and the tech before they could come to a conclusion as to what she should sling at him.
"Edith, I think you misunderstood me-"
"Oh I did, did I? What part of 'The baby is a frog right now!' did I misunderstand?"
"That's not what I-"
"Our baby is not a frog, Anthony Strallen!"
"Please, let me explain," he pleaded. He tried to reach across the bed for her hands, only to be rebuffed as she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him with tears in her eyes. "I...I've been doing some research-"
"I wasn't aware that Dickens dabbled in Embryology," she snapped. The tech, who was quietly picking up the tubes of gel, snickered.
"What? He didn't. I was actually looking up information on fetal development on the internet..."
"That's where it all went to hell," the tech muttered to herself. Edith smirked at the comment, then continued glaring at Anthony.
Anthony leaned against the bed Edith had been laying on not ten minutes before, waiting with happy excitement for their two month ultrasound. Somehow, they had gone from mutual, breathless anticipation to asymmetrical warfare in the space of one, stupid comment and his subsequent attempt to justify the same.
Anthony had had to blink back tears as they listened to the frantic swooshing of their baby's heartbeat. At that moment, everything that had changed in their lives – his inability to sleep, the sick all over the front of his suit when Edith hadn't made it to the toilet, his noble act of foregoing coffee, tea and alcohol in solidarity with Edith, his increasing anxiety over school choices – all of it was nothing compared to the joy of knowing that their baby's heartbeat was apparently charging along at a perfectly normal 156 beats.
"I may have gotten a bit overwhelmed when we heard the heartbeat," he admitted. "No coffee or tea this morning, and I was up late studying fetal development..."
"Why? We have a perfectly capable OB who has been astoundingly patient with your constant questions. She hasn't chucked us yet."
"That's how I know what questions to ask," he replied, as if it should be obvious. Edith rolled her eyes.
"You come on like like your about to question her credentials," she snapped.
Anthony's eye widened in surprise, then his forehead wrinkled in thought. Edith was only marginally successful in hiding how attractive this made him to her.
"I'm all that bad?"
"Would I have tried to throw a machine costing thousands of pounds at your head if you weren't?"
"Fortunately, it didn't come to that."
"We're not out of the ultrasound room yet, Anthony Strallen..."
The tech listened with a grin on her face while she surreptitiously stowed the fetal doppler and made sure there were no other loose items that would make good projectiles.
"Well, um…I didn't men to upset you, Edith. I was just remembering something I read last night, and when I saw the ultrasound image-"
"You made a noise like you'd been punched in the stomach and said 'Bloody Hell! It is a frog!' That's your baby, Anthony!"
"I didn't."
"You most certainly did!" Edith turned to the tech for verification and she nodded.
"No, I mean I said that, yes. But I didn't make that noise."
"You did, but I don't care about that. Why would you say something like that? And then to try to explain it away by saying that the baby is a frog right now, as if that made it any bloody better."
"It's a theory about embryonic development I ran across. Some German chap named...um..."
"Haekel. Ernst Haeckel," the tech supplied.
"Ah...right. Thank you..."
"Anthony, what the hell are you going on about?' Edith asked, shaking her head in frustration.
"Well, this, um, Haeckel fellow theorized that um, embryonic development mirrors evolutionary development."
Edith looked at him blankly. He cleared his throat and wondered why the tech was giggling in the corner of the room.
"I didn't grasp it all, but it means that as the baby grows in the womb, it takes on the characteristics of our vertebrate evolutionary ancestors, or something like that. So there's a fish phase and a-"
"Frog phase," Edith said in disbelief.
"Right! Yes! You've got it! And right about now, the little one should be amphibious. So, when I saw that image on the screen looking amazingly amphibian, I almost couldn't believe it!"
Anthony beamed at her, breathing a sigh of relief that he'd been able to explain what he'd meant. Now everything would be fine.
"Anthony."
"Yes, love?"
"That sounds like the biggest load of bollocks I've ever heard."
"Well," he replied in an affronted tone, "I'm no embryologist, but it made sense when I saw the ultrasound..."
"What do you think?" Edith asked the tech, who was full on guffawing by this point.
"It's a load of rubbish," she replied when she'd caught her breath. "Haeckel's little theory has been completely discredited, although there are a bunch of eugenicists that still cling to that nonsense."
They both turned around and stared at Anthony. His eyes had glazed over and he looked absolutely gobsmacked.
"Really!? Completely discredited!?" The tech nodded and he sat down heavily in the chir next to the bed. "Oh..."
"So...perhaps the reason you saw a frog on the ultrasound of our beautiful baby is because you're a seriously deluded prat with a severe caffein deficiency who shouldn't be allowed unsupervised access to the internet late at night anymore?" Edith mused aloud.
"Yes, I suspect you're right," he agreed miserably.
"Well then...now that that's all over," the tech said, busying herself at the ultrasound machine, "would you each like a copy of the ultrasound image to take with you?"
Edith agreed enthusiastically. Anthony just nodded, taking his copy warily and examining it from all angles. The tech and Edith looked at him expectantly.
"Um…amazing," he said weakly. "Just...amazing." Edith rolled her eyes at him, but at least she was smiling again. While she gathered up her things and passed a few words with the tech, he examined the picture closely again.
"I still think it looks like a bloody frog," he muttered to himself.
Anthony had learned to keep his poorly sourced medical knowledge to himself by the time the five month ultrasound came around. The OB was still remarkably patient with his questions, but he refrained from attempting anymore research into embryology.
As he held Edith's hand, their eyes were glued to the image on the screen, which he had to admit, bore very little resemblance to an amphibian at this point. Edith squeezed his hand tightly and he leaned over to kiss her forehead.
"Are you sure you want to know?' she asked him. "We could wait and be surprised."
"I thought you wanted to know."
"I do, but I can wait if you'd rather."
"I can't wait another minute!" he replied eagerly.
The tech hummed quietly to herself and smiled as she adjusted the wand over Edith's protruding belly. The OB paused in her low voiced discussion about which measurements to take and turned to the couple.
"Have you decided if you want to know the gender?" she asked.
"Yes," they said in unison.
"Marge has a very good track record with this," the doctor said, indicating the tech, "so we should know in just…..ah! Do you think, Marge?"
Anthony leaned forward over Edith, nearly knocking the tech's hand. The OB gave him a stern look and he sank back onto his chair. Edith giggled, making the image shimmy a bit.
"Hang on, I've got to find it again," the tech replied with a resigned sigh.
"So, what part of the animal kingdom do you reckon we're at now?" Edith teased, hoping to distract Anthony long enough to allow the tech to get another clear image.
"Pfft," he replied disdainfully. "Absolute codswallop. 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' my left arse cheek."
The tech began to laugh so hard she lost the image again. After a few moments of trying, she suddenly stopped and called the OB.
"There it is," the doctor said cheerfully. "Looks like the Strallens are having a little boy."
There was very little said in the moments after that were at all coherent, but once the OB had congratulated them and the tech had printed out pictures with a little arrow pointing to the pertinent blob, Anthony took a deep breath and lifted Edith's hands to his lips.
"We've got to come up with a boy's name now," he murmured. "I was so sure we were having a girl, that's all we've talked about."
"I've got the perfect name," Edith informed him through happy tears. "You planted it in my head, in fact.
"What is it?"
"Kermit!"