Hospital gives men the pain of birth experience in China

Now here’s one all the ladies will certainly love… at last there is a way to show men the world over that giving birth is not the most pleasant experience, and certainly something no man could, or would, ever do if given the opportunity to choose.

A hospital in China’s eastern Shandong Province has given would-be fathers a chance to get some idea of how it feels to experience one of the tougher aspects of becoming a parent – giving birth.

After frequent complaints from female patients that they weren’t getting enough sympathy from their partners during pregnancy, the Aima hospital in the provincial capital, Jinan, decided to offer taster sessions where men could experience something of the pain of giving birth.

The activity has proved hugely popular with scores of men attending bi-weekly sessions and as can be witnessed in the video above, it certainly gets the men sweating, and very often screaming in agony, to the delight of the women watching on, many of whom are prospective mothers-to-be.

Pads attached to a device are placed above the abdomen and carry electric shocks that the hospital says create a feeling similar to that of giving birth. Once the electric current begins to flow, the fathers-to-be writhe in agony as the nurse gradually steps up the intensity of the pain on a scale of one to ten.

“Basically it felt really painful, I feel like giving birth to a child is actually really not that easy, it felt like my heart and lungs were being ripped apart, it was basically really painful, you can’t even describe how painful it was!” said Song Siling who was brought to the session by his wife, and made it to level seven.

“Before if they hadn’t had this pain experience, they’d probably feel like giving birth to a child is not exactly difficult!” said mother-to-be Liu Yun.

While the men may have felt what they were experiencing to be agony, the simulation is only a shadow of the real thing, said nurse Lou Dezhu.

“This machine uses electric currents to stimulate the skin in a way that simulates the pain of labour, it doesn’t have any dangerous after-effects. For this experience the main thing is to let men experience the pain of a woman giving birth. Even though this pain is still far less than the pain experienced by women when they are giving birth, but still, if men can experience this pain then they’ll be more loving and caring to their wives.”

Wu Jianlong, who braved the pain right up until level ten, says the experience has radically altered his views on childbirth.

“Because all women have children and it usually takes quite a long time, I thought of it as being something really natural, something really normal that they can get through. But since experiencing this activity I feel like it’s really not easy for a woman to give birth to a child. It’s just painful, like something’s coming out from your stomach, very painful,” he said.

Compared to Europe and North America, Chinese men are relatively absent from the process of giving birth. Some state-run hospitals still don’t allow men to witness their partner giving birth at all, and this service provided by this hospital addresses these things in quite the unique way.

So ladies, if you ever feel your man is not fully sympathetic about the process of childbirth, maybe its time for a visit to the ‘pain experience camp’ in China!

Feel free to your thoughts…

e: