The baby of Hollywood actor, Tom Cruise, will not be arriving into the world in the traditional manner, it has emerged.

Instead - in keeping with the traditions of the Scientology religion which Cruise has followed for several years - a huge, pulsating egg containing the infant is to be "vomited up" by Cruise's partner, Katie Holmes.  Once the egg has been laid, it will be taken to the couple's Hollywood home, where Mission:Impossible star Cruise will sit on it until it hatches.

Cruise has been in the media several times recently over his outlandish plans for the birth of his first biological child.  In the past the twice married actor has told reporters that pregnant Katie (28) was under instruction to remain silent during the birth process.  More recently he has been quoted as saying that he plans to eat the baby's uncooked placenta and umbilical cord in the delivery room.  This latest statement, however, has left many people wondering if Cruise has finally lost his mind.

"What Tom is suggesting is not only highly unorthodox, but biologically impossible," one midwife told us.  "To suggest that Katie Holmes could lay some kind of enormous 'oral egg' is patently absurd."

Added the midwife:  "Her mouth's not big enough."

Despite this, Cruise is insistent that "the egg method" is the process which fiancee Katie should follow, even going so far as to cancel all his commitments for the next six months in order to give him the time he needs to incubate the egg until the child within is ready to break free.

"Hoo-Ha, I'm going to sit on that thing from morning to night, baby!" said Cruise, jumping on a chair and laughing for an exceptionally long time.  "Why should Mom have to do all the work, and then get to take all the credit?"

"I wish I had bananas for hands," added Cruise, cryptically.

Holmes' Dawson's Creek co-star, James Van Der Beek, has slammed Cruise's latest scheme, which he believes would cause "considerable distress" to Katie.

"Katie is very petite, and I imagine giving birth is going to be a stressful enough experience," Van Der Beek told reporters, "so to ask her to somehow develop some form of egg sack in her stomach, and then bring a huge egg up through her esophagus is really pushing things a bit too far.  Katie needs to put her foot down now before Tom has her turning her body into gas, or living on Jupiter or something."

We approached Holmes herself for her comment, but she wasn't allowed out.