Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Pseudocyesis

I've been doing "research" for my book. And based on my research I am predicting that Manda will have a girl. Studies show that women have more morning sickness when pregnant with girls. I think this has to do with an increase in the girly hormones. I dunno.

I was also reading about pseudocyesis. Pseudocyesis is false pregnancy. Basically when the body acts pregnant but there is no baby. It occurs in many species of mammals (most often dogs --or at least most often witnessed in dogs because we pay attention to them) when the corpus luteum (the ovarian follicle basically) fails to disintegrate after ovulation even though the ovum has not been fertilized (or the fertilization results in a non-viable pregnancy --e.g. a genetic disorder exists in the embryo). Thus, it is a physical phenomena. However, according to articles I read about pseudocyesis in humans, it is always a psychological disorder where a woman believes she is pregnant because she wants to be pregnant.

I do not doubt that in the presence of extreme desire for pregnancy, a woman can experience a psychosomatic false pregnancy. But I fail to be convinced that all pseudocyesis in humans is purely psychological. Surely there can be physical reasons for a woman's body to act pregnant when it's not?

What do you think? Is there a double standard here for humans?

2 comments:

Manda said...

I'm not sure about a double standard, but if I think really hard that I'm not pregnant will it go away? Probably not, and that was probably blasphemous...=(

In any case, my prediction has been a girl for a while now, but I have very different reasons for my hypothesis. I had two "portents" if you will, one in a dream and one while praying. Both indicated a girl, so I'm thinking that along with the morning sickness phenomenon (I've read that on many sites as well), I'm pretty sure.

Good luck with your research!
-Manda.

Anonymous said...

Don't you know that human females have to be crazy by are bvery nature? obviously, it can only be physical in dogs or other mamals because..... Me thinketh that it probably can be both mental or physical. Of course there was the woman I can remember going to a baby shower for when I was a little girl. it was before Ultra Sounds and she really had a tumor which the doctors called twins. Or the woman at your church whose tumor was a very large baby boy.