How it all started
Over a quarter of a century ago the first ultrasound images of a fetus inside the mother's abdomen were all the rage these images were grainy, but lucky parents were able to take away crude snaps of their unborn child, and for the first time parents realized the true miracle of what was happening in the nine months leading up to the birth of their precious baby.
These 2D scans are used extensively to help doctors measure and assess the growth of the fetus, but they convey very little information about behavior in the womb. In 2004 Professor Stuart Campbell perfected a technique that not only produces detailed 3D images but records fetal movement in real time, called 4D. His work has shown for the first time that the unborn baby engages in complex behavior from an early stage of its development. These 3D ultrasound images have shown many kinds of behavior inside the womb - from yawning, blinking, swallowing and thumb sucking, to grimacing and reacting to loud external noises.
It is these advances that made it possible to make the definitive film on gestation. Suddenly making a documentary about the unborn child was possible as we could now spy on a previously unseen and unknown world. National Geographic Channel and Channel 4 commissioned Pioneer Productions, one of the world's leading science documentary producers, with the co-operation of Professor Campbell, to make a film that was "to stay mostly in the womb".
With the extraordinary success of the film, we now bring you the ultimate pregnancy companion the DVD packaged together with a companion pregnancy keepsake book.
