For most expectant parents, they count down the days until they can hold, hug and “Ooh” and “Aaah” over their little one.
Now, however, new technology will allow these excited mums and dads-to-be to buy a 3D model of the foetus to cradle and show friends.
Eager couples can also purchase foetus key-rings to hang off their bags, keys and show off their baby-to-be to their peers.
Japanese inventors have devised a way to transform the commonplace ultrasound scan into an anatomically correct resin replica for parents to handle and keep as a memento.
The nine-centimetre (3.6-inch) resin model of the white foetus, encased in a transparent block in the shape of the mother’s body, is fashioned by a 3D printer after an MRI scan.
The plastic foetus will be an exact replica of your new baby.
You can hang this lifesize foetus from your handbag and share your good news with friends.
The company at the head of this ground-breaking, and only slightly creepy, technology are called FASTOTEC and have named the product the ‘Shape of an Angel’.
Tomohiro Kinoshita, of FASOTEC, said: “As it is only once in a lifetime that you are pregnant with that child, we received requests for these kind of models from pregnant women who do not want to forget the feelings and experience of that time.”
The ‘Shape of an Angel’ costs €942 and the company said the ideal time for a scan is around eight or nine months into the pregnancy.
An expensive gift to award yourselves just a few weeks before you’ll have a baby in the house…
But there is an option for those feeling the recession pinch too.
The company will start offering the 3D model of the foetus’s face for just €471 this coming month.
Can’t afford the full foetus? Why not invest in just the face?
FASOTEC, originally a supplier of devices including 3D printers, uses a layering technique to build up three-dimensional structures.
The modern technology doesn’t just allow parents to buy a plastic foetus to hang off their handbags, the models will also be used in hospitals to better inform patients of what their problems are, instead of relying on diagrams.
Now, stocking filler anyone?
