A fetus, taken out of its little "bubble" and placed on a wet paper tissue. Since the mother is in the 18th day of pregnancy (out of approximately 20), the fetus is almost fully developed (although a lot seems to happen during the last day) and it moves a little.. waving it's tiny legs slowly.. kind of creepy, really. What we have attempted here is to insert a catheter into the uterine artery connected to a placenta which in turn is connected to this little guy. We then proceed to insert another catheter in the umbilical artery... but it's extremely difficult as the needle is thicker than the blood vessel. Also, on that tiny scale everything tends to get sort of sticky.. Once in, we have to be careful not to push it in too much and pierce the opposite wall of the vessel. Add to that the fact that artery and vein are right next to eachother and you can imagine how hard it is to know whether or not your needle is in the right place.
We considered this a "practice session" just to get a feel for how to properly handle the blood vessels and surrounding tissue and such.
