BY NICOLE JAMES

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

For many women, pregnancy can be a monumentally joyous occasion. There are lots of positive things that expectant mothers can look forward to, but most would agree that morning sickness isn’t one of them. Fortunately there is a psychologist out there that may have found a cure to the ailment in sperm, specifically through ingesting sperm.

I have little doubt that someone out there right now is pondering to themselves “How can a person ingest sperm?” To put it tactfully, if you have to ask that question you’re not old enough to be reading this article.

Believe it or not, there is actually someone out there encouraging pregnant women suffering from morning sickness to perform oral sex to combat feeling sick. The hypothesis stems from the belief that women are sometimes sick during the first trimester of pregnancy because their bodies view the embryo as a foreign object that doesn’t belong in their body.

It is almost as if their bodies are having a strong negative reaction to the man’s sperm. The hypothesis (can’t stress it enough that it’s only a hypothesis) suggests that since the sperm a woman digests is the same chemical makeup as the sperm used to fertilize the mother’s egg, a woman could potentially ward off morning sickness by simply increasing her sperm intake. Yes, I did just say “increasing her sperm intake.” Try not to laugh.

The father of this theory (see what I did there?) is a man by the name of Gordon Gallup, a psychologist at SUNY-Albany. According to an article for the NY Daily News, Gallup specializes in human reproductive competition and behavior.

According to a Daily Mail article, Gallup is arguing that the more sperm a woman consumes while pregnant, the more tolerance that woman’s body will develop for the sperm in general, thus eliminating the nauseating feeling commonly referred to as morning sickness (which, by the way, does not only occur in the morning). There is somewhat of a necessary stipulation: the woman must perform the intimate act on the father of the child she is carrying, otherwise performing the act defeats the purpose. The genetic makeup of the sperm taken in orally must match that of the sperm taken in during normal sexual intercourse in order for the pregnant woman to build an immunity of sorts.

The psychologist’s reasons for urging women who are “with child” to engage in this highly personal activity are based off of research from the National Center for Biotechnology information, according to a CBS News article. That research made a correlation between oral sex and preeclampsia, a disorder that causes high blood pressure in expectant mothers and protein to be found in their urine, and states oral sex may decrease a pregnant woman’s chances of getting the condition. On the other hand, it is important to mention that Gallup’s theory, which tells soon-to-be mothers to perform fellatio on the baby’s father in order to build immunity to sperm, has never been tested.

Do you think it is a coincidence that the person behind this theory is a man? I think not, however, I’ll let you all decide.