Not Even Slightly

False pregnancy has sometimes been a subject for jest, but to doctors, who call it pseudocyesis, it is no laughing matter. Many general practitioners and some specialists have been fooled by women who seemed to be in labor but proved to be not even a little bit pregnant.

Three doctors at Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College Hospital report in the current issue of Philadelphia Medicine on a study of 27 cases of false pregnancy --the longest such series in medical annals. Some false pregnancies, said Drs. Paul H. Fried, Abraham E. Rakoff and Robert R. Schopbach, had lasted only four months, some as long as 14 months. Some patients had had them two, three or even four times.

The symptoms included partial or total lack of menstruation, abdominal enlargements, breast changes (enlargement, milklike secretions, darkening around the nipples), and 22 of the 27 patients reported that they had felt the stirrings of life. Nine had been diagnosed as pregnant by 16 doctors; heart sounds had been reported with two of them while "in labor."

False pregnancy, said the doctors, is mental in origin. All their patients had become overanxious, and said it was because they had tried in vain to conceive. Some had wanted a child to secure a husband's wavering affections or to prove themselves as "complete women." Usually their background included insecurity and tension, as well as frustration, and sometimes even a need for punishment. Thus beset, the mind took refuge in "pregnancy" which the body simulated.

Since all such patients firmly believe themselves pregnant, it does no good simply to tell them that they are not, said Dr. Fried and his colleagues. A woman with pseudocyesis will go shopping for another doctor to confirm her pregnancy, or her symptoms will soon recur. A careful explanation with a little psychiatric treatment does the trick, said the doctors. Four of their patients, infertile for two to seven years, later became really pregnant.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.