Woman faked being pregnant with quintuplets for nine months

37-year-old Canadian Barbara Bienvenue faked a quintuplet pregnancy for a full nine months, fooling the town and her boyfriend Paul Servat. How did she pull this off?

Barbara met Paul online last summer and informed him she was pregnant after a few months of dating. She exhibited all the signs of pregnancy including morning sickness and a fast growing belly. She initially told him she was pregnant with twins, but the number of babies in her belly gradually crept up to five. The cash-strapped couple asked for help from their community, who supplied them with funds and supplies to take care of their expected large family.

Paul didn’t find out that the pregnancy wasn’t for real until Barbara went to the hospital to give birth. The doctors informed the expectant dad that his girlfriend had never been pregnant to begin with, and she’s now being held on psychiatric evaluation. Paul has said that he’s giving back everything the community gave to them, and has broken off his relationship with Barbara.

It’s possible that Barbara herself really thought she was expecting five babies. She could have been experiencing a condition called pseudocyesis. A woman who wants to be pregnant very badly may could cause her body to change as if it were pregnant. “The woman’s brain then misinterprets those signals as pregnancy,” according to webmd.com, “and triggers the release of hormones (such as estrogen and prolactin) that lead to actual pregnancy symptoms. This isn’t the first time this type of behavior has happened for Barbara Bienvenue. “This isn’t the first time she’s done it,” a relative told QMI Agency. “But honestly, we never would have thought she was sick enough to do it again.”

Paul Servat says that he’s currently devastated. “I lost everything, it was my whole life,” he told QMI Agency. “We were so happy. Even my parents, they were so looking forward to having grandchildren.”

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