Kuwad syndrome: how a 79-year-old man suffered three dozen 'pregnancies' in his life
'01.05.2020'
Any woman who has given birth will say that pregnancy can become a nightmare. Nausea, stretch marks, aching ankles, childbirth itself, which are described as the most excruciating pain of all, writes the channel “Scientific pop. Science for All "on Yandex.Zen... If any man dares to say what he represents, how difficult and unpleasant it is, the lady will simply laugh in his face. But she will not have the conscience to do so if she learns the story of William Bennett from the English county of Kent, who by 1981, when he was 79 years old, had already experienced his thirtieth "pregnancy".
How is this possible, you ask? Indeed, at the moment, this condition is extremely rare in men, and only after changing the sex to the opposite. You can recall the transgender Thomas Beaty, who fell into the Guinness Book of Records, or Hayden Cross, who in 2017 became the first Englishman to decide on this strange act. But William Bennett was not a transgender person and would hardly have been able to give birth at the end of the eighth decade. All his pregnancies were most directly related to his four daughters.
Whenever one of them conceived a child, the father showed extremely characteristic symptoms. In particular, his stomach swelled, which acquired a natural shape only after this or that daughter was resolved from the burden. Mr. Bennett's first pregnancy was a real shock for him, since he did not feel anything like it when his wife carried four of his future tormentors. It’s hard to say why they decided to breed like rabbits, knowing about the suffering of their father, but the fact remains — he felt the birth of thirty grandchildren and granddaughters. Unusual symptoms were confirmed by a doctor who signed as Dr. Fitzgerald. According to her notes, William Bennett was especially hard at the time when his three daughters were pregnant at the same time. The man’s stomach was swollen by more than a meter in girth, that is, from the side it might have seemed that he had swallowed a basketball. He had to wear maternity pants and very loose shirts.
Although a specific diagnosis was not made to the Englishman, in medical practice one can easily find precedents for the condition he was experiencing. You may be familiar with the phantom or sympathetic pregnancy. Specialists also sometimes use the term "Kuwad syndrome."
All this is usually observed in future fathers, not grandfathers, and almost never leads to physical torment. This is not such a rare phenomenon. In 2007, British physicians examined 282 future fathers with Kuwad syndrome and revealed many interesting manifestations: bloating, cramps, nausea, mood swings, depression, insomnia, fatigue, fainting, and back pain.
On the subject: Why the mother of the child transgender through the court refuses to motherhood. VIDEO
In other studies, scientists noticed physical changes in men surviving a sympathetic pregnancy. They had fluctuations in the levels of prolactin, testosterone, estradiol and cortisol. Professor Amos Gruneberg also noted that hormonal changes, as a rule, begin in the first trimester and persist until the birth of the baby.
The above may seem like a funny experience, a kind of involuntary solidarity with a life partner who really does something very significant and important, but in some cases it is not fun at all. Some men described very unpleasant sensations. One of them was constantly hungry and had an irresistible urge to eat poppy and chicken feed - sometimes in the middle of the night.
Doctors still can not indicate the physical cause of these strange symptoms. Perhaps they will be able to better study this phenomenon when they have at their disposal an object of interest that is as interesting as a long-departed William Bennett, who had four daughters who gave birth to 30 children.
