Things Guys Need To Know About Pregnancy – When Kevin Gruenberg’s wife became pregnant, she was worried, upset, and obsessed with the idea that her belly was growing. He kept thinking about a family story, starting with his mother getting pregnant, and his father gaining weight. In 2014, thirty years later, Gruenberg had a similar experience, although it went beyond overeating. And even though she’s a psychologist in Los Angeles, she doesn’t know where to turn for help.

Gruenberg, who now heads an organization that runs a support program for fathers called Love, Dad, felt ostracized by his peers. Desperate and alone, he began researching couvade syndrome, where men experience symptoms of pregnancy. This, he said, is something he “feels really good mentally and physically”.

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It first appeared in a book written by Edward Burnett Tylor, a British anthropologist, in 1865. It comes from French.

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, gnawing or hatching. In his earliest documents in the scientific literature, the symptoms of pregnancy were seen as purely psychosomatic. Currently, the broad definition of the syndrome means that it is difficult to monitor the spread of the disease. But the couvade, as it is often called, has appeared in the United States, China, Thailand, and other countries, according to Arthur Brennan, a British obstetrician-gynecologist and professor at Kingston University in the United Kingdom. .

Brennan became interested in couvade after completing her master’s degree. Hearing anecdotal reports from fathers about “phantom pregnancies” and reading papers on the subject, he decided to research it. In 2007, he published a small study of 14 men at a London teaching hospital. The father was diagnosed with various diseases, including stomach, loss of appetite, and various diseases. Many of them reported their symptoms with partners.

“I was kicking and grinding and I couldn’t hold anything back,” said one man. “I was always hungry and craved chicken korma and poppadams. Even at dawn, I woke up and prepared one,” said another subject. In this article and in subsequent research, the list of symptoms seems to include almost everything: diarrhea, constipation, leg cramps, sore throat, depression, insomnia, weight gain, weight loss, fatigue, toothache, toothache.

The symptoms also seem to follow the same pattern as physical pregnancy: they appear during the first and third trimesters, and usually disappear after the baby is born. Some symptoms never appear at first; some continued after childbirth. Whenever the couvade came, it seemed to carry stigma. “In the UK, the disease seems to be of little interest and men who show symptoms are often ignored, ridiculed or remain unknown,” Brennan wrote.

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But the symptoms keep getting worse. In 2019, during his wife’s second pregnancy, NBA player for the Washington Wizards, Bradley Beal, went public with how his cravings and weight gain during pregnancy made him tired and embarrassed. his friends. “I was up at 3, 4 in the morning eating ice cream when I shouldn’t have been eating ice cream,” Beal told NBC. “It’s all because mom was pregnant and I had the same symptoms.” Guys on the r/predaddit Reddit forum are posting similar experiences. “Some days I wake up very sick and can’t keep anything down all morning,” wrote one poster. “I’m not sick otherwise, it’s just vomiting.” Paying a lot… Maybe it’s all in my head.” In 2016, Karlos Williams, NFL player for the Buffalo Bills at the time, said that he lost weight because of the extra weight after the birth of his fourth child. She attributed her poor performance in the game to “pregnancy injuries”.

Many fringe theories have been proposed to explain the couvade. There is the Freudian: pregnant envy. And the psychological explanation: the marginalized father cries out. But these men know that they are not really pregnant. The enduring mystery of their symptoms reveals something deeper: Becoming a father changes masculinity, emotions, and even hormones. Our society misunderstands this change.

Think about when a child is born and how much the hospital rules change with the father staying outside the delivery room. “For most of human history, men have been outlawed,” said Darby Saxbe, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California who studies families. Now the father is there to deliver; they make skin-to-skin contact with newborns for bonding.

But outdated gender stereotypes persist in society. “We’re celebrating the idea of ​​men being high-testosterone and aggressive and masculine, and that’s not compatible with the role of a parent,” Saxbe told me. Men do not think to tell their doctors that they have become fathers, and the medical form does not always ask. Men’s experiences with postpartum depression (a condition of unknown origin in men with no clear definition) can be dismissed as a common concern of new fathers.

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Fatherhood is physically changing as well. Saxbe’s research shows that fatherhood is associated with lower testosterone levels in men, and that these declines are associated with greater investment. Hormonal changes can explain fathers’ weight gain as well as depression before and after childbirth. (However, it is not clear whether hormones create these effects or vice versa; research is in its infancy.)

Many experts I spoke to seemed skeptical about some of the more serious symptoms of couvade—those more commonly seen in pop culture—such as big bloated bellies and labor pains. But they realized that some symptoms can be explained by studying hormones, for a simple reason: hormones are often related to other people in our environment. “The research on couvade is not well established,” Saxbe said. “I have not seen much evidence of pregnancy. What I found was a pattern of correlation [between psychological and physical states],” he said.

Brennan believes that hormone studies may be the most fruitful area of ​​research to try to explain the couvade. Unfortunately, if the level of testosterone in a man decreases, there will be changes in his body. “The hormonal component of the disease during the third month of pregnancy for men would certainly benefit from further study,” he told me by email.

Another psychologist, Daniel Singley, who runs a practice called the Center for Men’s Excellence that focuses exclusively on men and couples, thinks that many of the symptoms of couvade can also be explained from the point of view of the men’s health community. “As a society we punish men and boys for depression or anxiety or any type of mental health problem,” he told me. “Some guys will freak out and turn their depression into ‘I feel like I’m heavy or have gastrointestinal issues. My stomach hurts. I’m getting migraines. I’m having muscle spasms.'” After the birth of her own child, Singley experienced unwanted intrusive thoughts, which can be a sign of postpartum depression in women.Like many I spoke to, he then turned to other fathers for help.

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For their part, the men I spoke to who experienced couvade symptoms did not believe they were actually in labor. He said that in the sea from his body and mind, there is no one to turn to. Gruenberg, a psychologist, didn’t think any professionals could help her, so she started her own support group. Another man I spoke to in the United Kingdom, Scott Mair, had difficulties coping with the birth of his seven children. During the pregnancy and delivery of his wife, he felt pain in the stomach and back, shoulders and fatigue. He was tired and had no food. He was sent to the hospital, and his medication increased. Mair said he saw a very good doctor, but the doctor didn’t connect the symptoms to his experience as a father. It was after the devastating birth of her seventh child that she finally sought help and found someone who ran a postpartum depression workshop for fathers.

Years ago, a friend’s wife told me that, in the hospital when her husband gave birth, there were no resources for her: no food, no place to sleep, no one to talk to. I thought he was selfish, he seemed angry that the woman’s pregnancy was not only about him. But looking back, I think he was crying for something real: society told him he had no place in the family.

But as research on couvade progresses, the disease is being redefined. Brennan believes that the stigma around him is changing in line with his role as a father. “In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the disease and the importance of men taking a more active role in pregnancy and preparing for it,” he said. “Indeed, those who show the disease are considered to be sympathetic to their fellow man.”

Some researchers believe that the more important a father’s parenting is, the more likely it is for his mind and body.

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