Driving into work every day as a sonographer, Constance Bergner is praying.
“I pray for the grace to be God’s instrument in every situation,” she says. “I pray that He will become my hands, heart, mind and voice so that I may do, feel, think and speak only that which the patient and their family need to experience in that moment.”
As a sonographer, Bergner has the privilege of introducing parents to the new life they helped to create. “The simple real-time glimpse of a tiny living person within the womb establishes an unexplainable joy and solid truth,” she says. “But along with these joys there is sometimes loss, chronic pain or infertility which are devastating forces of sadness and struggle. Relying on the knowledge I gained from my Catholic studies degree … gives guidelines for my interactions with the various patients I encounter.”
Her work is not without its controversy.
“I constantly deal directly with the hot-button topics of our culture,” she says. “Life and its beginning, the various means of reproduction, quality of life issues if a baby isn’t ‘perfect’ … But through the great blessing of ultrasound, we have a new perspective on the miracle of our physical beings … Seeing a small, strong life growing within a mother’s womb, many times even before she herself knows she is pregnant, is just one example of the extraordinary gift of sharing in God’s creativity.”
