Degree of Delivery Room Pain Linked to Mother’s Mate
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iStock/Thinkstock(LONDON) — Fathers-to-be shouldn’t take it personally when a woman howls in pain during childbirth. Or maybe they should.
A new study out of the University of London suggests that women in the delivery room may actually feel more discomfort when their significant other is hanging around to provide moral support.
To get a better idea, researchers first gave 39 women a test to determine how close they were to their male partner. Then, the women were hooked up to a machine that delivered a “tolerable” amount of pain to one of their fingers.
While wearing a brain scan, each woman was asked the degree of discomfort felt when their partner was present as opposed to when they weren’t.
As it happened, women who said in the test that they preferred less closeness to their mate reported more pain in their finger. No difference was noted in the other women.
So are men really making things better when they’re around for the birth of a child? Perhaps they should ask the mother if they really want them there in the first place.
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