A baby scan can be a poignant moment for any parent but these images prove they can also be funny, shocking or even just plain weird.
The scans, which make use of 4D technology, reveal in stunning clarity what fetuses actually do while developing within the womb, such as picking their noses and making crude hand movements.
One baby appears to be flipping two fingers to the sonographer, while another looks like it’s giving its parents an encouraging thumbs-up.
Another sticks its forefinger up in a gesture that looks like it could be lost in thought. One baby, who is likely yawning, looks as though it’s screaming in protest.
Specialized 3D scanning, which is not provided by the NHS, enables expectant parents to have a preview of their child’s appearance well in advance of the due date.
Mum-of-two Aimee Catherine Ford, from Bristol, said she was ‘shocked’ when her unborn son Edward gave her the two fingers in September 2015.
She said: “I was seven months along when I went in for the scan. I’d never had a 4D scan before but I wanted to see what he’d look like.”
She went along with her partner Russ, 25, daughter Evelyn, four, and her father. Aimee said: “I was a little disappointed at first because he didn’t want to show his face.
“Then suddenly his foot came into view, then his two fingers. We were all a bit shocked!”
“Afterwards we sent a print-out to my mother-in-law, and she said he’d probably turn out to be very cheeky – which he is.” Edward was born in November.
Other photographs show an unsociable infant curling up his arms and legs to block his parents’ view of his face, as well as a newborn picking its nose with two fingers while being scanned.
Expectant parents who are anxious to see a preview of their child’s appearance are growing more and more interested in these 4D scans.
Rather then the grainy ‘flat’ images produced by the 2D scanners usually used by the NHS, a 4D machine stitches together pictures taken from a variety of angles to create clear three-dimensional images which are then recorded on video.
The scans are a more advanced kind of conventional ultrasound in which images of what is inside the body are created using very high frequency sound waves.
Similar to earlier types of ultrasound, a transducer, or probe, is placed on the mother’s belly and manipulated to ‘look at’ different parts of the uterus.
These sound waves bounce back off the foetus, helping to create a ‘picture’ of the child on a screen.
4D scans use the same frequency of sound waves as in a normal ultrasound.
But the sound waves are directed from many more angles, producing a ‘real-time’ video of the foetus as it moves and allowing scientists to say the images are in four dimensions.
