A woman in China is reportedly facing a lawsuit for making her boyfriend undergo three hours of childbirth simulation that led to physical harm.
The man in Henan province had to be hospitalised and have part of his small intestine removed after undergoing the painful simulation, China Times reported.
The man had agreed to undergo the pain simulation test after his girlfriend and her mother insisted that he should experience a woman’s challenges before their engagement.
The man initially rejected the proposal but later reluctantly agreed to go to a medical centre where he was hooked up to electrodes that gave out electric currents to mimic the sensation of contractions, reports said. Several hospitals in China have been offering childbirth pain simulation experience for over a decade.
In a post on Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu or Red Note, the unidentified woman said the first 90 minutes involved manually increasing the level of pain, while for the rest of the session, the intensity of pain remained at the maximum level.
“My boyfriend started screaming and struggling at level 8, swearing and crying at level 10, and by the end, he was gasping for air. My sister and I kept wiping his sweat,” the woman wrote, according to South China Morning Post.
The man suffered from abdominal pain and started vomiting shortly after returning home. A week later, it was discovered that the simulation damaged a part of his small intestine, forcing him to undergo surgery.
What a dumb idea. Obviously this is a physically unhealthy thing to do. And if my partner wanted me to be in pain then that would be the end of the relationship.
I don’t want you to be in pain but you’re our human incubator so… pop a couple Tylenol and enjoy!!! Love u babe
Do these ladies not have epidurals or other pain killers available during labor? That doesn’t take care of all of the pain, but in most cases the choice to go without would be a choice, and how the hell would you calibrate something like this to account for that pain reduction?
This whole thing is insane, I’m just shocked at the degree. Like there’s no way this makes sense even if you try to give it benefit of the doubt.
While I agree that this is awful and should not have been done, I just wanted to clarify a point about epidurals. It isn’t always a choice. There’s a window of time when you can take them, and sometimes that option is just not available (for a variety of health and timing reasons).
But yeah, don’t inflict pain on people for no reason. That’s barbaric. These hospitals should not have these devices available for what seems like recreational (?) use.
Several hospitals in China have been offering childbirth pain simulation experience for over a decade.
Yeah, that’s the craziest part of this story. Why would any hospital do that? It seems wildly irresponsible.
Yeah, don’t fuck around with electricity. That shit is dangerous. Even those “muscle simulator” things that are marketed as massage options. Don’t send any electricity throughout your body unintentionally. Everything in our body operates based on small amounts of electricity. Mess it up slightly and it might not operate again. Mess it up a lot like this, and you likely induce internal electric burns. Not fun.
Done at a hospital. I would have assumed the hospital would not allow dangerous equipment to be operated by novices.
And I would be wrong.
Chinese hospital.
Careful, someone will think that’s sinophobic
Huh, I never heard that word before, thanks the new word of the day
These comparisons with electrostimulation are dumb. Men have (on average) much more muscle mass, including abdominal muscles. To calibrate this pain on women and then send the same intensity to men whose muscles then contract much harder and thus cause more pain is misleading and doesn’t serve a purpose anymore.
It’s not just this. The amount of childbirth pain differes greatly among women and so does the effect of hormones (that can make it better) and stress (that can make it worse), so there’s no way to really calibrate it and offer a universal experience.
Many men have some experience with internal organ cramps (gullbladder, kidneys…) The pain comes in waves just like during childbirth contractions and is quite similar (source: several women with experiences of both). It’s so much easier to just say - remember when you had that half-day long cramp episode last year? That’s similar to how it feels.
She’s an asshole for insisting (who wants their partner to be in pain?), but I don’t understand why she’s being sued instead of the hospital. Wouldn’t they be responsible for the injury?
He got the full birth experience, including the complications and needing to be cut open to remove “something”
