Man Tries Pregnancy For One Day To Understand What Expecting Mums Go Through

Pregnancy is often more difficult than most of us assume. Right from conception, to carrying the baby for nine months, to fighting those raging hormones. Not to forget, the pesky challenges of morning sickness, backache, heartburn, leg cramps, vaginal thrush, and much more in between.

It is safe to say that there is a lot that a woman’s body goes through.

While most pregnant women have the moral support of their partners, they do not experience these physical changes and thus, might not be able to empathise completely as such. 

However, a man from Australia wanted to change the norm and decided to undertake the one day pregnancy challenge.

TikToker Dad Takes One Day Pregnancy Challenge

Maitland Hanley is known for doing wacky things on TikTok. He wanted to see what pregnant mums deal with on a daily basis when they carry extra weight around their midsection area.

To do this, he chose several tasks with varying degrees of difficulties and tried to accomplish them in one day. For instance, his first video in the pregnancy challenge series was of him lying down. 

Goal: To try to get out of the bed as quickly as possible. 

How: In order to recreate the weight that pregnant mums carry around the waist in the third trimester, he strapped a watermelon to his stomach and two cantaloupes on his chest with plastic wrap. 

Given that pregnant mums put on around 11-13 kilos (25 to 35 pounds), Hanley’s representation was about accurate. The watermelon weighed around 9-11 kilos (20 and 25 pounds) and cantaloupes were 1.4kilos (3 pounds) each, so the weight was also quite spot-on. 

Result: As he tried to get out the bed, Hanley realised that sitting up straight was out of the question. In fact, he found that his best plan of action was to be able to swing his legs to gain momentum and then get up. The video clocked around 16.3 million views and went viral. 

Other tasks that he attempted included putting on the shoes, trying to get up off the floor, and attempting to come out of the bathtub. He even found that the “baby bump” can be a good substitute for a tray while eating at any location. 

Hanley Wanted To Try Out The Pregnancy Challenge For THIS Reason

Now if you are wondering what made Hanley go out of the way to try these tasks, as well as experience what it felt like to have contractions–you’d be correct to assume that he had expecting dad jitters! 

Yes, you read that right!

His girlfriend was pregnant at that time and facing trouble with all the routine things. So Hanley decided to recreate the scenario to better empathise with her condition. 

Now that’s what we call an adorable partner! While Hanley has become a dad now and has shared a few videos of him stepping into new daddy shoes, he is not the first man to attempt to play the role of an expecting mum.

Other Men Taking The Pregnancy Challenge 

• The Try Guys

If you remember, The Try Guys experienced the joys and most importantly, troubles and pains of expecting women. In the first of the five-part series exploring motherhood, they wore the pregnancy bellies for a day.

For their second video, the men tried changing diapers.

In the third part, the tried raising robot babies, only to realised just how difficult—and also rewarding–motherhood can be.

Their fourth part was where they experienced labour pain. Ouch! 

The last was a bit mushy, and each of The Try Guys called their mums to find out more about their motherhood journey. They also took this opportunity to thank them for all that they had done for their kids.  

Then came the guy who taped watermelons to his belly.

• Man tapes watermelon to belly

In a similar video, a man tried to experience what it is like to be pregnant for a day.

From strapping a watermelon tightly around his waist, sleeping with it, then waking up with the weight and moving around the house doing all the other activities, he did it all.

He man even tested the TENS machine to feel contractions.

While they may be fun to watch, these men clearly wanted to experience the pain and to get a closer look at what expectant mums go through on a daily basis.

And just for that we laud them and hope that they were able to appreciate the troubles and pains an expecting mum goes through.  

Take a bow for all the mamas! 

Source: The Independent

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