Empathy Belly Lets Dad Endure Pregnancy

Tim Patenaude strutted about like a woman in the final stage of pregnancy. His back was swayed and his legs were slightly spread. He moved slowly and with a shortness of breath, his face flushed with the strain of the cargo he carried.

And it was no act.

Patenaude was not really pregnant, however. But he is one of the few men who have a good idea of what it feels like.

In late February, when his wife, Karen, was eight months pregnant with their first child, Patenaude took a deep breath and allowed a childbirth educator to strap onto his body a 33-pound garment that gave him breasts, pressure on his bladder and a belly that prevented him from seeing his toes.

“It gives you an understanding, definitely, of what she is going through,” said Patenaude after wearing the garment for about 20 minutes during a childbirth education class at Allentown Hospital. “I didn’t think it would be as difficult as it was. Being a man, you never do get a good understanding of what your wife is going through.”

The garment that caused Patenaude to empathize with his wife’s condition is called The Empathy Belly. The Allentown Hospital-Lehigh Valley Hospital Center recently purchased one of only 200 in circulation and has begun to use it as a tool to get expectant fathers more involved in pregnancy.

The Empathy Belly was conceived about seven years ago by Linda Ware, a childbirth educator and counselor now based in Redmond, Wash.

“As a teacher of childbirth education for 15 years, I found that I could lecture and show charts and facilitate discussion about the changes pregnant women were going through, but I would still hear men say they really didn’t understand,” Ware said. “They would make comments like, ‘How come she needs so many naps?’ or ‘How come she quit working out at the gym?’ or ‘How come she has insomnia?’ or ‘How come when I throw the Frisbee she won’t chase it?’ ”

The result was a tan canvas garment that covers the entire torso from shoulders to hips. Fitted with Velcro, the garment has built-in pouches and a plastic belly. Weights are placed into the pouches to simulate a baby’s arms and legs and hands. The belly is filled with warm water to simulate a fully expanded uterus.

The garment causes pressure in all the appropriate places--around the ribs, where all a woman’s organs get pushed as the baby grows, and on the bladder, where the baby’s head usually rests. To say the least, the feeling is uncomfortable; the appearance, extremely unattractive.

Yet men are clamoring to wear the Empathy Belly. Phil Donahue wore it for nearly an hour last year during a segment of his talk show. Regis Philbin strutted around in New York City for a day when his co-host, Kathie Lee, was pregnant. And when Jean Smart, one of the stars of the television show “Designing Women” was expecting, her husband donned the belly in front of millions watching “The Pat Sajak Show.”

Patenaude was the only one who wore the belly during his class. Karen Patenaude videotaped the scene from the back of the room, her T-shirt stretched tightly over her belly. There was a smile on her face. About 20 expectant couples sat in a semi-circle on the floor. They were grinning.

First, Fran Triolo, coordinator of the hospital’s maternal and childbirth education programs, placed a canvas belt around Patenaude’s chest, making it difficult for him to take a deep breath. Patenaude supported the belly as Triolo placed the entire garment over his shoulders. A pouch was placed under the garment in the area of his bladder to cause pressure there. (All told, the Empathy Belly simulates about 20 of the typical symptoms of pregnancy.)

Then Patenaude slipped a navy smock over his head. It looked like something an elementary school child would wear in art class. It was an example, Triolo said, “of the stylish clothing pregnant women wear.”

Now that Patenaude was “pregnant,” he had to perform simple tasks--sit down, get up, tie his shoes, pick up items from the floor. He moved slowly, his hands often drifting down to try to help support the belly. His classmates laughed. Patenaude complained he was uncomfortable in his stomach and his back.

Triolo suggested he lie down. But Patenaude laid on his back, only to grimace in pain.

Instructed Triolo: “Don’t lie on your back. It hurts. Not only does it hurt, but you’re blocking a major blood vessel to the baby.”

Patenaude rolled onto his side and was made comfortable by the ritualistic placement of pillows--between his legs, under his belly, behind his back, under his feet.

Karen, who had not said a word, made just one comment: “How much does that belly cost?”

Although Linda Ware had the expectant father in mind when she created the Empathy Belly, she soon realized it could help stem the epidemic of teen-age pregnancy.

She recalled the first teen-agers she gave an Empathy Belly lesson, a class of what she called “high-risk kids.”

“When I got in front of those kids, I thought, ‘Oh, my God. These kids are dead.’ They were like zombies. They were carving their initials on the desk. I said, ‘What would you like to do?’ They said, ‘I would like to leave this class.’ ”

Ware said she skipped the discussion and went into action. She watched the children go through an amazing metamorphosis.

“Because it is so physical, because it is hands on, because it triggers a lot of emotional gyrations, it caught their attention. I watched the heads come off the desk. I saw one eye open, then two.”

The belly also stimulates communication between youths and parents.

“It was very clear to me that this was a way to get their attention and to get them talking honestly,” Ware said. “You can try to open kids up, but it’s very difficult for kids and for parents to get kids to open up and talk.”

Ware put her Empathy Belly on the market eight months ago. But the design continues to change. Water-filled breasts froze and leaked during shipment, so the water was replaced with foam. The bag for the water-filled belly kept leaking so new materials were substituted.

About 200 of the $595 bellies have been sold--to hospitals, schools and physicians. Ware said she decided not to make the belly available to the public because she was concerned people could get hurt if they did not take the belly seriously and that its integrity would be compromised if people used it as a joke.