About
Hello. I am Marta.
Fourteen years behind the probe. Five babies of my own. One Air Force husband, seven duty stations, and a very deep understanding of what it feels like to do this on your own.
My story
It started at a twenty-week appointment, alone.
My second was due in the spring, and my husband was seven thousand miles away. I sat on that table by myself with my phone held up over my belly, trying to angle it so a man in a tent could see a screen he could not really see. The connection dropped twice. The appointment lasted eleven minutes. I cried the whole way to the car, and then I wiped my face and went to pick up my toddler, the way you do.
I was already a sonographer then. I knew every button on that machine. And I remember sitting in the parking lot thinking: it did not have to be like that. Not the rushing. Not the eleven minutes. Not the little curled printout going soft in my purse.
Baby Beats is the room I wished I had been in that day. Low lights, a sofa that seats six, a screen big enough for your mother to see from across the room, and no clock anywhere you can see it. You get one pregnancy at a time, and only a small handful of them in a whole life. It has always seemed to me worth slowing down for.
Fourteen years, briefly
How I got here
2011
Qualified and registered through ARDMS, then four years in hospital obstetric imaging in San Antonio. Thousands of scans, and the beginning of a very steady hand.
2015
A move to maternal-fetal medicine, where I learned to sit with families on the hardest days as well as the happiest ones. That is where I learned how to say difficult things gently.
2019
Orders brought us to southern New Mexico. I started scanning military spouses in the evenings, in a borrowed room, mostly for free, mostly because nobody else was.
2021
Baby Beats opened on Mesquite Street with one machine and a great many houseplants. Eleven thousand sessions later, the houseplants are still here.
Credentials & care
Warm room. Very serious equipment.
A soft room does not have to mean soft standards. I am registered with ARDMS in both Obstetrics & Gynecology and Abdomen, I carry the RDMS credential, and I follow the AIUM guidance on the prudent use of ultrasound in every session I have ever run.
- GE Voluson E10 with HDlive Studio — the same platform used in maternal-fetal medicine practices, with a movable light source I adjust while you watch.
- A Samsung HERA W10 in our second suite, which genuinely helps with twins and with an anterior placenta.
- Curved 2–8 MHz and matrix 4D probes, harmonic imaging and speckle reduction tuned to you, rather than left on a factory preset.
- 4K capture straight from the machine to your private gallery. Never a phone pointed at a monitor.
- Every study quietly over-read by a board-certified Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician within 72 hours.
Keeping her safe is the whole job
I hold to the ALARA principle — as low as reasonably achievable. Thermal and mechanical indices stay visible on the screen for the entire session, thermal index stays below 0.7, and Doppler is used sparingly and never over the brain or heart in the first trimester. I cap how long I linger over any one area, and I log total exposure time on every visit. Most sessions finish well under the machine’s FDA output limits, and I would rather end a session early than push for one more picture.
Five of my own
On being a mother of five
People sometimes ask how I have the patience to wait out a shy baby for forty minutes. The honest answer is that I have five children, and I have not been in a hurry since 2013.
Mine are nineteen, sixteen, twelve, nine and four. I have been pregnant in four time zones. I have been the woman crying quietly in a waiting room, and I have been the woman who could not stop laughing at a hiccup on a screen. I have had a pregnancy I do not talk about much, and it is the reason I will never, ever rush someone who needs to hear a heartbeat one more time before she can sleep.
So when you tell me you are anxious, I am not being polite when I say I understand. And when your toddler climbs on the equipment cart, I promise you I have seen worse, usually from one of mine.
An Air Force family
Seven duty stations, and counting
I have been an Air Force wife for most of my adult life. I have packed a house in nine days. I have missed two of my own baby showers. I have kept a phone on the pillow beside me for six months at a stretch, waiting for a call that might come at three in the morning or might not come at all.
So the military discount here is not marketing. It is 15% off everything, forever, for active duty, guard, reserve, retired, veteran and every single spouse. No code, no paperwork, no proving anything. And if orders move your date, your date moves with them — no fee, and no conversation about it.
We are proud to look after families from Holloman Air Force Base, White Sands Missile Range and Fort Bliss, and we will happily open on a Sunday if that is the last day you have before you go.
Come and see us& Boutique
The little shop you walk through
Half of this place is a scanning suite. The other half is the room you pass through to reach it — heartbeat bears, chunky knit blankets, swaddles, sibling tees, tiny knit bonnets with ears, and keepsake frames waiting for the picture you are about to take. Everything is in-store only, and priced the way small-town shops used to be.
I would love to meet you.
Tell me how far along you are and when you are free. I read every message myself, and I answer within one business day.