The joy of a baby starting to kick is something that all mums-to-be have revealed in experiencing, but for the first time, researchers have discovered just how powerful those little kicks can be.

 

New research from London has calculated for the first time just how powerful fetuses are, and found that their tiny legs can kick their mothers’ wombs with upwards of 10 pounds of force - or twice as hard as hitting a tennis ball - the study suggests. 

 

Findings suggest that when the baby is 30 weeks it can hit up to this figure of 10.5lbs of force. That's some strong kicking! 

 

The study looked at the mechanical forces generated by a fetus’s kick to better understand not only the strength of the developing baby, but also how this strength affects the baby's developing skeletal systems.

 

 

To come up with the findings, researchers studied 341 MRI scans of babies aged 20, 25, 30 and 35 weeks in the womb and built a computer programme to track the baby's movement and measure the force of their kick and the stress it caused their bones.

 

The study found that the force of the fetal kicks increased during the period between 20 and 30 weeks of pregnancy. This force went from about 6.5 lbs. of force at 20 weeks to 10.5 lbs. at 30 weeks. But by 35 weeks, the strength of the fetal kicks had decreased to 3.8 lbs of force. This decrease likely occurs because, in late pregnancy, the fetus has less room to move around, the researchers said.

 

The study is the first to explore fetus kick force and the mechanical stress and strain due to fetal movements in the human skeleton in utero.

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