What is the name for the disorder when a woman shows the signs of pregnancy but she is not pregnant?
This usually happens because she wants to have a child more than anything else. She starts lactating, and her stomach grows as if a baby were growing.
This was featured on an episode of Law and Order: SVU.
April 26th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
It’s pseudocyesis or a phantom pregnancy – In pseudocyesis, the mind tricks the body, and vice versa. Doctors think it develops when a woman obsesses over pregnancy out of desire or fear. (Queen “Bloody” Mary I of England famously suffered false pregnancy under pressure to continue the royal line.) A woman may stop menstruating, or her stomach may become distended due to stress or constipation. But her brain interprets the signs as pregnancy, which triggers the pituitary gland to secrete hormones like prolactin to prepare the body to carry a child. She gains more weight around the midsection, and her breasts swell and might even lactate. Many false pregnancies end when the woman goes into labor and delivers nothing.
Pseudocyesis occurs in only 1 to 6 of every 22,000 pregnancies, and it can also happen to children, the elderly, and men. “I think the men are a little more emotionally ill,” Paulman says. Doctors confront the patient with medical evidence and offer counseling. If that doesn’t work, the patient could have an underlying psychotic illness.
Pseudocyesis has a sibling syndrome: “couvade,” or sympathetic pregnancy, where men experience many of the symptoms of their wives’ or daughters’ pregnancies—weight gain, nausea, headache, irritability, backaches, abdominal pain. A study of 81 expectant fathers found that almost half of them gained weight in the third trimester. Sympathy abdominal pains during birth are even more common, Paulman says. “I guess we all want to be in touch with our feminine side.”
April 26th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
their called NUTS!!!!!
April 26th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
pseudocyesis or psudopregnancy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_pregnancy
April 26th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
I looked it up within the internet. It is called false pregnancy where your body tricks itself to think or believe that you are pregnant and you are really not. It is a true study and has been documented. A woman who tested positive for a pregnancy but when she went to get an ultrasound, there was no baby at all, only the sack but no baby. Weird I know. I saw the actual video and case study. Good Luck!
April 27th, 2010 at 1:11 am
hysterical pregnancy
April 27th, 2010 at 2:31 am
hysterical pregnancy