Do Babies Cry In The Womb? What Those Ultrasound Scans Really Mean

When my wife was twenty weeks pregnant with our twin girls, we received exactly three pieces of deeply conflicting, entirely unsolicited advice within a forty-eight-hour window. My mother-in-law insisted we needed to play Mozart pressed directly against the bump to make sure the girls would eventually get into a decent university. Our hipster barista grimly warned us that going to the cinema to see an action film would emotionally traumatise the babies via loud noises (more on that later, because he was irritatingly half-right). And my mate Dave confidently declared that fetuses are essentially just comatose baked beans until the day they're violently evicted.

None of this adequately prepared me for our 24-week ultrasound scan. We were doing one of those fancy 4D scans where the imagery looks a bit like melting wax candles, and suddenly, Twin A's face scrunched up. Her jaw dropped open. Her tiny little bottom lip started to violently quiver. The sonographer, bless her, was rushing to freeze the frame and hurriedly typed 'babi A' instead of 'baby A' on the monitor as my wife squeezed my hand hard enough to disrupt my blood circulation.

Naturally, I panicked. I immediately asked the NHS sonographer the question that had completely derailed my morning: do babies cry in the womb?

The silent pantomime

Our paediatrician, Dr. Sarah, later tried to explain this terrifying visual to me during a routine check-up. She used a term that sounded like a classified military file—State 5F, I think—which apparently is just medical jargon for fetuses practising their absolute misery.

From what I gathered from her highly technical and slightly rushed explanation, they aren't actually sad. They're just stretching out their facial muscles in preparation for the real world. Because they're entirely submerged in amniotic fluid, they can't exactly take a massive lungful of air to scream. Instead, they basically unhinge their little jaws like tiny snakes, flutter their lips, and gulp down fluid in a sort of rhythmic, weirdly coordinated sequence. It's purely mechanical.

The most mind-bending part of this whole business is the utter lack of tears. I spent an unreasonable amount of time that week worrying that my unborn daughter was floating around in a salty soup of her own existential dread. But it turns out, they physically can't produce tears yet. Their tear ducts are basically under construction until about a month after they actually enter the world. So they're just pulling the faces. It's pure amateur dramatics. A completely dry, silent pantomime of grief that looks absolutely devastating on a monitor but means absolutely nothing emotionally. (The placenta is handling all their oxygen anyway, so all this breathing practice is really just them showing off).

The cinema incident and other loud mistakes

Let's revisit the barista's grim warning about the cinema. I had confidently assumed that being submerged in fluid meant the twins were practically soundproofed in there. I pictured them in a sort of sensory deprivation tank, completely isolated from my terrible taste in music and the sirens of central London.

I was so profoundly wrong.

Research, and our own anecdotal disaster at the local IMAX, confirms that third-trimester fetuses absolutely do react to external stimuli. We went to see the new James Bond film. About twenty minutes in, a sudden, massive explosion ripped through the surround sound speakers. Instantly, Twin B went into what felt like a frantic gymnastics routine against my wife's bladder. They startle. They hear loud noises perfectly well through the abdominal wall, and it absolutely shocks them. I spent the remainder of the two-and-a-half-hour runtime frantically whispering apologies into my wife's jumper while gently patting her stomach in a desperate bid to calm the situation down.

This is where the science actually gets quite interesting, though I only half-understand it. They aren't crying because they're sad about James Bond destroying an Aston Martin. They're startled, and their little heart rates spike, which triggers those same physical reflex movements we saw on the scan. It's just a neurological reaction to a sudden change in their environment. A friend of ours recently bought us a hideous greeting card with a typo that proudly proclaimed 'welcome new babie!'—and honestly, that card caused me more lasting distress than the IMAX explosion caused the twins.

The guilt of a pregnant breakdown

My wife cried a lot during the third trimester. I don't mean a delicate, single tear rolling down her cheek. I mean full, shaking, ugly-crying.

Once, she broke down because we ran out of semi-skimmed milk. Another time, she wept for twenty minutes because a pigeon on our balcony looked at her aggressively. The worst part wasn't the crying itself, but the immediate, crushing guilt that followed. She was absolutely terrified that her own emotional distress was somehow leaking through the placenta and permanently wiring the twins for lifelong anxiety.

Dr. Sarah waved this fear off entirely. She explained that while a mother's chronic, severe stress isn't brilliant for a developing fetus because prolonged exposure to cortisol can cross the barrier, an occasional emotional meltdown over dairy products is perfectly fine. The babies barely register it. They might sense a slight shift in hormones, but your standard, run-of-the-mill pregnancy weep is just part of the biological ride. You don't need to maintain the emotional baseline of a zen monk for nine months. The babies are entirely indifferent to your feelings about the aggressive pigeon.

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Negotiation tactics for an active bump

So if you do accidentally startle them with a loud noise, or you've just seen them practising their tragic cry-face on a scan and feel desperately helpless, you can honestly intervene.

I found that just absentmindedly rubbing the bump while watching telly did wonders to calm the frantic kicking. Studies apparently show that fetuses actively respond to maternal touch, lowering their heart rates when a hand is pressed against the belly. Talking in a low, calm voice also seems to work, though I mostly just recited the ingredients off the back of a cereal box because I felt stupid trying to hold a one-sided conversation with a stomach.

When the silent practice becomes a deafening reality

Of course, all this silent, underwater practice culminates in the horrifying moment they're really born and their vocal cords connect with oxygen for the first time. The transition from the muffled, warm womb to the cold, loud reality of our flat was brutal for everyone involved.

When the actual crying started—the real, ear-splitting, 3am wailing—we quickly realised we needed actual gear to survive. We bought the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit with the flutter sleeves because someone told us organic cotton prevents weird newborn rashes. It's nice enough, and the fabric is genuinely incredibly soft, but I'll be completely honest with you: trying to thread a squirming, screaming infant's arms through tiny aesthetic flutter sleeves at three in the morning is like trying to dress an angry octopus. It looks adorable once it's on, but you've to earn that cuteness through sweat and tears.

On the other hand, the Panda Teether saved my sanity. When the twins hit the teething stage and the crying escalated from "I'm hungry" to "my face is exploding," this little silicone panda was our lifeline. It's brilliant largely because it looks utterly absurd sticking out of their mouths, but the textured bamboo bits genuinely seem to massage their gums when liquid paracetamol alone isn't cutting it. It's dishwasher safe too, which is the only feature I seriously care about anymore.

To try and distract them from the general chaos of our home, we also set up the Rainbow Play Gym Set in the living room. It's undeniably beautiful. It doesn't look like a plastic spaceship crash-landed in my lounge, which is a rare victory for baby gear. The wooden A-frame is sturdy, and the hanging toys are lovely, though Twin B entirely ignores the beautifully crafted geometric shapes and just violently bats the little elephant until she falls asleep.

Ultimately, seeing your unborn baby cry on a scan is just one of the many bizarre, unnerving previews of parenthood. It feels deeply personal, but it's just biology doing its weird, messy homework. They're just winding up the machinery for the main event.

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The bits you still want to know

Will playing loud music make my unborn baby cry?

It won't make them emotionally sad, but yes, it can absolutely startle them. Sudden loud noises like a cinema explosion or a dropped saucepan will likely cause a reflex reaction. They might jump, kick, or pull that weird crying face as their heart rate spikes. It's basically the fetal equivalent of you jumping when a door slams.

Do fetuses honestly feel pain when they make that crying face?

My paediatrician was very firm on this: no. The facial contortions you see on an ultrasound around 24 weeks are purely mechanical practice. They're flexing their jaw and breathing muscles to prepare for life outside the womb. They aren't in pain, they aren't sad, and they definitely aren't holding a grudge against you.

When do the actual real tears start?

This completely threw me, but babies don't cry actual tears in the womb, and they usually don't cry tears when they're first born either. Their tear ducts are too underdeveloped. Real, wet, salty tears usually only show up about three to four weeks after they're born. Before that, it's just a lot of dry screaming.

Can my baby hear me when I try to soothe them?

Yeah, eventually. By the third trimester, they can hear your voice through the amniotic fluid. It sounds a bit muffled, like you're talking underwater, but studies show that the rhythmic sound of a parent's voice and the physical sensation of you rubbing your bump honestly lowers their heart rate when they're startled.