The sensation of tremors in the abdomen haunts 40% of Australian women long after the pregnancy, Australian scientists came to this conclusion after having a survey of two hundred mothers. Tremors can occur daily and last from a year to 28 years after birth. What causes them and what they depend on is not yet clear, but they are more common in younger women who have experienced aftershocks while carrying a baby.

Phantom shocks are a phenomenon that mothers have long known, judging by their correspondence on forums, but have not yet been studied by doctors. We still don’t know anything about its mechanisms either. However, it can affect a woman’s condition after childbirth, including psychological, so it would be useful to understand it to prevent postpartum depression.

Disha Sasan, from Monash University in Melbourne, and her colleagues decided to start by finding out how often women encounter phantom shocks and how they react. They surveyed 197 Australian mothers aged 18 to 60, and among them, 39.6% said they felt tremors after the birth of their first child. Mothers with many children continued to face this phenomenon after the next birth.

One in five women had tremors every day, and one in three lasted more than a year. The record-holder was an Australian woman who felt tremors 28 years after her pregnancy.

Researchers tried to determine what caused the occurrence of phantom tremors. They found that women experiencing phantom tremors were, on average, several years younger than those who had not encountered them. In addition, women who have experienced abortions, that is, did not complete the pregnancy, no tremors appeared (the authors of the article do not specify the duration of termination of pregnancy). But stillbirth, apparently, does not affect the manifestations of aftershocks. That is, apparently, the fact of gestation and birth affects the tremors.

Scientists have not been able to find dependence on the type of intervention in pregnancy – caesarean section, stimulation of childbirth, Epidural Anesthesia and others. The authors of the work also found no connection with the emotional state after childbirth – for example, the strength of attachment to the child.

Researchers believe that the most plausible explanation for phantom tremors maybe women’s habit of paying attention to tremors during fetal development. Pregnant women are usually advised to monitor the frequency of aftershocks and, if they stop, contact a doctor immediately. Therefore, it can be assumed that women get used to listening “to themselves” during the gestation, and then continue to interpret other signals from internal organs as habitual Tremors.

Perhaps phantom tremors have something to do with the phenomenon of phantom pain. We also know not all about them, although scientists are already trying to treat them with freezing or computer games. And about other deceptions of feelings, which our body is capable of.