Pregnancy Denial-- a real psychological disorder?

In the run-up to her trial, it seems that every leading pregnancy expert in France has been interviewed by the media - and suddenly people here are no longer talking about premeditated murder, they are talking about an intriguing psychological condition called pregnancy denial.

In the flood of articles on the subject this week, it was a double-page spread in the left-leaning Liberation which really grabbed my attention.

The figures the paper gave were startling - every year in France, between 1,600 and 2,000 women apparently suffer from pregnancy denial, and at least 230 discover or admit they're pregnant only at the moment they give birth.

Surprisingly, most of the examples cited were not of teenage girls who had never had a baby - they were mainly mothers of at least two children who were all so mentally opposed to the thought of having another child that they didn't show a single physical symptom of their pregnancy.

Apart from a tiny weight gain of one or two kilos there were no visible changes to their bodies. Many of the women even continued to menstruate - the need to deny the pregnancy was so strong, explained doctors, that the mind controlled the body and suppressed all external manifestations of the pregnancy.