‘Phantom Kicks’: Women’s Subjective Experience of Foetal Kicks after the Postpartum Period
During pregnancy, a woman will attribute increased abdominal sensations to foetal movement. Surprisingly, many women report that they feel kick sensations long after the pregnancy, however this experience has never been reported in the scientific literature. Here, we show that almost 40% of women in our sample experienced phantom foetal kicks after their first pregnancy, up to 28-years (average 6.8-years) post-partum. Using a qualitative approach, we found that women describe the phantom sensations as ‘convincing’, ‘real kicks’ or ‘flutters’. Twenty-five percent of women described the experience as positive, and 27% reported felt confused or upset by the experience. Our results demonstrate that phantom kicks in the post-partum period are a widely experienced sensation, that may have implications for a woman’s post-partum mental health. The mechanism behind the phantom kick phenomenon is unknown, but may be related to changes in the somatosensory homunculus or proprioception during pregnancy.