Darlin, my wife, says that I don't need to come to the ultrasound, but she is glad that I want to be there. She has scheduled it for 7:30 a.m., so that I can make it to the office by nine and, therefore, not use up any of my valuable vacation or sick time. Darlin assures me that my presence is not required at her 10:00 checkup with the midwife.

She doesn't like to pull me away from work. I don't know why. I write for and edit a university publication that is published four times a year. Missing a day's work doesn't dramatically affect anything for me or my coworkers. Not so for her, an optometrist who runs her own practice. If she misses a day's work, the practice doesn't bring in money and inconvenienced patients need to be rescheduled.

But I like going to the first ultrasound and to her prenatal appointments, as well. I like to be involved. So I'm keeping the option open of taking the morning off. To be honest, attending the first ultrasound feels like an absolute necessity to me. I don't talk about this out loud with Darlin much, but I see it as more than the warm fuzzy moment when we first see an image of our child. If there's bad news about the baby, there is a good chance we're going to receive that news today. I don't expect bad news but I want to be ready for it, and that means not leaving Darlin to receive bad news alone.

This is our third pregnancy, so we've been through this before. My mother arrives at the house at 7. She has her morning paper and her coffee, and she cheerfully send us on our way so that she can read the paper. Our daughters are still asleep upstairs.

Thirty minutes later, we sit down with the ultrasound technician. Darlin reclines on the bed with her head elevated, belly exposed. I pull up a chair so that I'm right next to her, and I hold her hand. Coffee in the other hand. We look at the small computer monitor suspended in front of us. The tech is on the other side the bed, seated in front of her own, larger screen and typing Darlin's info into her computer. She's friendly, just a few years older than we are, and we all talk about our children as we get ready to take a peek at our next child.

The tech squirts a clear jell onto Darlin's belly, and stretches out the cord on her blunt ultrasound tool to make certain it will reach. She places it on Darlin's belly and wiggles it around a bit in the jell to get started. We immediately see a jumble of images on the screen. Black. White. Not warm and fuzzy, at all. Radiological, and vaguely reptilian in the sense that a few minutes ago I'd never seen a picture of this baby, but now I glimpse individual vertebra in little tadpole's gently curving spine. The tech stops wiggling the ultrasound wand, and now we clearly see the image we came for.

"There's the baby," says Darlin cheerfully, as if someone had been doubting its existence. I make a soft, happy, wondrous noise, as I am wont to do. Another baby!

I am suddenly aware that the tech has gone quiet. She is trying to communicate something to Darlin without speaking. I look away from the screen, peering in the darkened room across the prone figure of my wife. The ultrasound technician is silently displaying two fingers.

"Two," says my wife in a perplexed voice.

"Two what?" I say

"Two babies?" says my wife, without looking away from the tech.

"What about two babies?" I ask. This is an honest question. It's 7:30 in the morning in a darkened room, and this unexpected turn of the conversation has me flummoxed.

"You're carrying twins," she says.