ABSTRACT
Screening ultrasound is the common medical practice of prenatal imaging using sound waves to ‘look through’ the pregnant body. The phenomenological insight is that although the ultrasound individuates the fetus-brings forth by making visible the fetus as a child-the technical experience of ultrasound imaging turns out to be relational in an enigmatic sense. Ultrasound imaging is an experience of someone rather than something looking inward such that the experience of ultrasound imaging is also an experience of seeing the sonographer and indirectly the presence of the child. When an anomaly or other medical issue is identified, ultrasound imaging is revealed in its sociality, temporality, and diagnostic complexity. People may respond to waiting for the diagnosis of what is unexpected in a myriad of ways: anxiety, fear, confusion, denial, or indifference. For the practice of neonatal-perinatal medicine, the people need to realize that medical technologies disclose the child.
