Thingamababy

Sonograms are exciting until your baby is born, and then… not so much. However, if your baby doesn’t come to term, then a sonogram could be all you have to remember.

Disclaimer: The FDA recommends against keepsake sonograms. In other words, undergo an ultrasound only for medical reasons. From the linked article: “While ultrasound has been around for many years, expectant women and their families need to know that the long-term effects of repeated ultrasound exposures on the fetus are not fully known.”

Just the same, here are a few keepsake options.

1) Baby Light Gems are sculptures of baby faces crafted from 3-D ultrasounds. They can be produced in a variety of block materials, including glass-cut acrylic, polished aluminum and brass. It seems you need the ultrasound conducted by an approved provider. Presumably they take special measures to ensure a nice face shot.

2) Fetalkeepsakes.com etches photos into crystal sculptures, free-standing portraits or ornaments. They can be produced from a 2-D or 3-D sonogram printout, or a regular photo of your child. However, the web site references scheduling an “in-home ultrasound portrait sitting,” so maybe there is a difference in quality between giving them a photo and having them capture the ultrasound image themselves.

3) Bashoycanvas is the option I’d choose if doing an ultrasound only for medical reasons. Bashoycanvas creates innocuous framed artwork using a printout of the 2-D ultrasound you received from your regular doctor. They take your ultrasound image, process it to make the baby’s outline pronounced, add a bit of razzle-dazzle artistic interpretation and then you have a piece of artwork. How does this differ from what an enthusiast could do at home with a scanner and Photoshop? Well, they print on canvas with archival ink at sizes from 16×20″ to 42×60″. Cool.

4) Sonogram picture frames are perhaps the least expensive and easiest keepsake to arrange. They are simply picture frames designed for a sonogram image, often with sickeningly cute sayings and artwork embedded along the edge of the frame.

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006Miscellaneous