Everyone likes cuddling babies, but doing it before the baby is actually born is a bit weird. We don’t mean wrapping your arms around a pregnant woman’s bulge – we mean cuddling a 3D model of a foetus, taken from an ultrasound scan and turned into an actual plastic object. Yet, according to the UK’s top video UK’s top video parenting website, Channel Mum, this will be the baby trend for 2016. Expectant parents can pay about £400 for a full eight-inch “baby” before the real thing is born. If that’s too much, a mere £170 will get you a small cast of your unborn child’s head and shoulders, made with a 3D printer. Which is cute, right? Just a little sawn-off sculpture of the head of your foetus to take to work? No?

Well, steel yourselves, because a quarter of British parents have apparently shown interest in getting their hands on one of these oddities, inspired by the US trend for “gender-reveal parties’”. Yes, just when you thought this was bad enough already, it links in with an American craze for gathering together everyone you know to announce that your baby is going to be one of two things. (You know, you’re either having a boy or a girl, you’re not going to give birth to a wardrobe.) Anyway, there’s no point asking if Bowie died for this, because before you know it, well-meaning bearded men will be swaddling these fake babies in slings and popping to Waitrose with them strapped to their chests to get some practice in before the birth. Just imagine – you might find yourself going round to a friend’s house and being asked if you’ve ever held a newborn, before being handed a small perspex print-out of their zygotes.

In other parenting predictions for 2016, Channel Mum has also discovered that a full 77% of parents would consider giving their child a Star Wars-inspired name, which makes you wonder if they did this survey while standing outside the local Odeon the week before Christmas. The most popular names this year are set to include Finn, Ezra and Rey, all characters in The Force Awakens. Then there’s the trend for the Heartbeat Bear Kit, a £25 gadget that records the sound of your unborn baby’s heartbeat as a pregnancy keepsake. Meanwhile, 68% of mums say they would consider adopting a local pensioner as a granny stand-in, apparently inspired by the Man on the Moon Christmas ad for John Lewis. This combats the loneliness of both old people and new mothers, with websites to link up interested parties on both sides. Though it’s a trend that will presumably only last until they invent a 3D printer to print out an OAP of your very own instead.