Chronicle Editor
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
IT was supposed to be the feel-good story of the year.
Thirty seven-year-old Giosame Thamara Sithole had given birth to ten babies, the first such delivery to be recorded in the world.
On a cold night in Pretoria (South Africa), Sithole had given birth to seven boys and three girls, and with the stroke of Caesarian knife, had entered into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Seven June was by all accounts a remarkable day. The birth of ten healthy babies in one go, is a miracle of science and nature. Overnight, before they were even a day old, the Tembisa 10, as they were called, were superstars. The 10, and their mother, grabbed headlines across the globe. Every media house wanted to tell their story and every pair of eyes wanted to catch a glimpse of them.
Ten human beings, with 100 fingers and 100 toes, in one womb, seemed an apt illustration of the wonder of the human body in a year during which a global virus had shown just how vulnerable it can be.
Then a few days later, it all seemed to come crashing down. Authorities could not find the decuplets. A search across the length and breadth of South Africa, in both public and private hospitals, had not revealed any such miraculous delivery.
There was no picture of the decuplets and none of the team that had made the delivery had come forward to claim the medical breakthrough that they had just undertaken.
In the days that followed, the story was discredited, and some questioned the level of journalistic work that had gone into its making. Last week, writer, Piet Rampedi, stuck to his guns, urging authorities, that are threatening legal action, to come clean on what happened to the decuplets.
For some however, Rampedi, an esteemed journalist, was simply scammed by the parents of the non-existent babies.
The Gauteng government had after all said Tembisa Hospital staff have determined Sithole was not recently pregnant nor gave birth.
Some believe however, that Sithole, who once claimed to have given birth to twins that also disappeared without a trace, might be suffering from pseudocyesis or phantom pregnancy.
According to the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, pseudocyesis as a very uncommon condition, with a prevalence in contemporary gynecological practice of 1-6 cases per 22,000 births.
“…in Africa, there is a higher prevalence, with estimates of about 1 out of 160 patients presenting for infertility treatment. Generally, the majority of cases of pseudocyesis are observed among women aged 20-44 years, although no age is exempt, 80% of the affected persons are married and both single and multiple episodes of the condition have been described.
The symptoms and signs reported in pseudocyesis include amenorrhea, abdominal enlargement, breast enlargement, and changes around the nipples and areolae, uterine enlargement and patients’ reports of fetal movements, as well as constitutional symptoms like nausea, vomiting, weight gain, and reduced appetite,” the journal said.
According to Mpilo Hospital Acting CEO and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Solwayo Ngwenya, the condition is largely psychological.
“It is a condition when a woman believes that she is pregnant and actually attends antenatal clinic and goes on and on. In some cases, doctors are also misled that the person is pregnant and go along with it. Some women have even tried to give birth by caesarian section and cause a lot of problems when there is no baby found.
“This is actually a psychological condition that manifests itself in a person thinking that they are pregnant. It is a rare condition but it does happen once in a while. So, patients like that should have a proper check-up and an ultrasound scan. They should then be sent for psychosocial counselling and so forth,” he said.
In the days since she “gave birth”, Sithole has also came out against the authorities, accusing them of attempts to keep her from her miraculous offsprings. According to Prof Ngwenya, this is yet another symptom of phantom pregnancy.
“It produces a very sad and dramatic effect because the person would have gone there to have a baby, they go to sleep and when they wake up, they find that there’s no baby. The abdomen will be distended in some of the patients. So, there is a legal issue of the patient asking where is the baby? What happened to my baby and so forth? I urge to practitioners to check with an ultrasound scan to check if there is a baby before they fall for this condition. Those that have been found to be suffering from it, we wish they could have psycho-social support to help them recover from what is a mental issue,” he said.
According to Healthline, there are three leading theories on why phantom pregnancy occurs.
“Some mental health professionals believe it’s related to an intense desire or fear of becoming pregnant. It’s possible that this affects the endocrine system, which in turn causes symptoms of pregnancy. Another theory relates to wish fulfillment.
“Some mental health professionals believe that when a woman yearns to be pregnant, possibly after experiencing multiple miscarriages, infertility, or because she wants to get married, she may misinterpret certain changes in her body as a clear sign that she’s pregnant. The third theory is related to certain chemical changes in the nervous system that are related to depressive disorders. It’s possible that these chemical changes are responsible for the symptoms of false pregnancy.”
Online Reporter