Can I feel pregnant when my wife is?

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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from how stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I am a staff writer
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is trustee editor. Candice Gifts in Canadas is an editor

(00:21):
Edit tris. I'm gonna go with edit tricks 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. M we're talking

(00:42):
about couveid or kuvad syndrome, first described by Hippocrates. I
believe in three correct that's right, And if you don't
feel like whipping out your French, you could also call
it false pregnancy or sympathetic pregnancy. And essentially what happens
is a man develops studos SISIs, which is a swollen belly.

(01:02):
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

(01:25):
one of the theories behind Cuvey syndrome is that the
man has developed a rivalry with his wife. He wants
in on the attention, the action, the you know, just
the glamour of being pregnant. And it's worth mentioning to
no men choose to develop phantom pregnancy any more than
they choose to develop man breasts. This is a psycho

(01:47):
somatic 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 of two men. It happens to women
who maybe I had a miscarriage in the past, or
they've lost a child and they have this extreme emotional

(02:07):
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 woman where if you
stand in the mirror and you say your name how
many times fast? I'm not going to tell you because
you're gonna try to do it. I don't want to.
I don't want to lose her on how stuff work.
But yes, I have heard of bloody Mary. Well, apparently

(02:28):
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

(02:48):
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 into the gestation period, they
expect to see a baby. Lisa Montgomery was a woman
who had a pretty extreme case of Vot syndrome. In

(03:08):
December two thousand four, she actually murdered a woman who
was pregnant. She cut open her womb and removed her
unborn child because she felt very proprietor proprietarily 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,

(03:30):
that's 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 it's basically a mental disorder
and a certain to a certain degree. Um, and it
is psychosomatic. It's it's the mind playing tricks on the body. Um.
That seems logical enough, But the thing is the medical

(03:53):
community hasn't really established a clear link yet, although I
think they're hot on the trail with a let to
lights and hormones. So what do you think about psychosomatic conditions?
Should people with them be pitied? Should they basically just
be smacked around and and 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

(04:15):
episode of Grey's Anatomy with the man who had this? No? No,
I didn't, but I did watch a law and order
SVU where a homeless woman had had several children taken
by the state and she developed Couved 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 counsel, you can go

(04:36):
see psychiatrists. 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 crect. Yes, well, clearly,
what you're saying is is that this could conceivably be

(04:57):
worked out just by talking about it, which you know
indicates it is a psychosomatic condition. It's the mind exerting
um some sort of authority over the body and causing
physical symptoms. UM. The bottom line for all this is uh,
if you do have Kupid syndromes, seek help, see get beast,
be sensitive to people who happen, and be sure to

(05:18):
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(05:40):
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