Feeling Her Pain

"My personal morning sickness started soon into the first trimester," says Joe Robinson, husband of Jess and father of a 5-month-old baby girl. And that's not all Robinson experienced during his wife's pregnancy: He shared just about every pregnancy symptom with her but labor. He gained almost 25 pounds, developed cravings, suffered nausea and tossed and turned at night. What Robinson experienced is called a sympathetic pregnancy or Couvade Syndrome.

Couvade in its narrowest sense refers to the practice in which a father simulates labor and childbirth shortly after the birth of his child to demonstrate his role in reproduction or to ease the mother's pain by sharing in it. It has come to mean, however, the father's sharing of sundry pregnancy symptoms with his wife anytime during the pregnancy or shortly thereafter.

The frequency of Couvade is unknown, but some researchers estimate that it affects from 11 to 65 percent of expectant fathers. The onset of male "pregnancy" symptoms usually starts near the end of the first trimester and generally stops with the birth of the child. Couvade also seems to be a universal phenomenon, with cases reported across cultures, continents and centuries.

But what causes Couvade? For years, researchers have sought the answer to that question using cultural or psychological reasoning. For example, in a 1994 article, a group of Italian researchers wrote that Couvade appears "to be the psychosomatic equivalent of primitive rituals of initiation into paternity." And in a 1991 article, Dr. H. Klein of the University of Texas Medical Branch reviewed some of the possible causes of Couvade such as "somatized anxiety, psuedo-sibling rivalry, identification with the fetus, ambivalence about fatherhood or parturition envy."

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