Stuff You Should Know - Can I feel pregnant when my wife is?

Episode Date: May 6, 2008

Sympathy pregnancy is the condition where a man feels pregnant while his wife actually is. Learn more about the symptoms for sympathy pregnancy in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I am a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com and with me is trustee editor Candice Gibson. Candice, is it editor or editrix? I'm gonna go with editrix just because it sounds authoritative and I'm feeling pretty

authoritative today because I've got a really weird question for you and I already know the answer. Can I, assuming I'm a man, feel pregnant when my wife is? The answer is a resounding yes, at least from anecdotal evidence. We're talking about Kuvaid or Kuvaad syndrome first described by Hippocrates I believe in 300 BC, correct? That's right and if you don't feel like whipping out your friends you could also call it false pregnancy or sympathetic pregnancy and essentially what happens is a man develops pseudosciences which is a swollen belly, this phantom belly, is that he's actually carrying a child and now I've heard about men succumbing to their pregnant wives cravings and them also wanting

chocolate shakes and french fries at three in the morning but who doesn't? Well naturally I do every day but when you get that phantom belly I think you're going a step too far. You're really stealing your wife's thunder don't you think? Yeah and that's one of the theories behind Kuvaid syndrome is that the man has developed a rivalry with his wife. He wants in on the the attention, the action, the you know just the glamour of being pregnant. And it's worth mentioning too no men choose to develop phantom pregnancy any more than they choose to develop man breasts. This is a psychosomatic condition and it's brought on by this emotional attachment or maybe confusion with all these changes that

are happening and it's also very important to mention too that this isn't something exclusive to men, it happens to women who maybe have had a miscarriage in the past or they've lost a child and they have this extreme emotional need to actually bear a child again and there's actually a pretty famous case of this. Have you heard of Bloody Mary? I have actually the the woman where if you stand in the mirror and you say your name how many times faster? I'm not going to tell you because you're going to try to do it. I don't want to lose her on how stuff works. But yes I have heard of Bloody Mary. Well apparently one of the reasons she was so bloody reputedly is because she had this

syndrome. She either had a lot of bad runs with miscarriages or she couldn't actually bear her children and so she took her aggression out in a pretty violent way. And when women get this condition a lot of times it results in more serious consequences than men because when men have it I think they know innately they're not going to actually give birth to a child when all of a sudden done. It goes away after the woman gives birth, things get back to normal. But for women at the end of the gestation period they expect to see a baby. Lisa Montgomery was a woman who had a pretty extreme case of Kuvalli syndrome. In December 2004 she actually murdered a woman who was pregnant. She cut open her womb and removed her unborn child because she felt

very proprietary. That was her baby. She should have that baby. That was a bad day for everyone. Indeed. My big problem with sympathetic pregnancy is this. You know obviously with Lisa Montgomery cases that's pretty serious stuff. But specifically with men it's psychosomatic and it is across the board in every case. This isn't a physical malady. It's basically a mental disorder to a certain degree. And it is psychosomatic. It's the mind playing tricks on the body. That seems logical enough but the thing is the medical community hasn't really established a clear link yet. Although I think they're hot on the trail with electrolytes and hormones. What do you think about psychosomatic conditions? Should people with them be pitied? Should they basically just

be smacked around and told to get over themselves? Well I'm not really sure because I know psychiatrists but it does make for pretty great TV. Did you see the episode of Grey's Anatomy with the man who had this? No. No I didn't. But I did watch Law and Order SVU where a homeless woman had had several children taken by the state and she developed Kuwait syndrome. It was it made for moving television. I'll tell you that. The good news is because this is in the media and more people know about it. There are ways for people to get help. You can get counseled. You can go see a psychiatrist. There are ways that you could sit down with your wife and talk about the feelings that you're having and see if maybe you can reach a level ground where she understands

what you're going through and she's equally as sympathetic to your condition as you are to hers all the while. You're fetching her pickles and ice cream. Yes. Clearly what you're saying is that this could conceivably be worked out just by talking about it which indicates it is a psychosomatic condition. It's the mind exerting some sort of authority over the body and causing physical symptoms. The bottom line for all this is if you do have Kuwait syndrome seek help. Seek it fast. Be sensitive to people who have it. And be sure to read Can I Feel Pregnant when my wife is on HowStuffWorks.com. It could save your life. For more on this and thousands of other topics visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast. HowStuffWorks.com.

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