Childbirth is an experience so unique to each and every woman that most men cannot begin to wrap their head around labor pains — until now. Although the only true way to find out what going into labor is like is to experience it, a hospital in China hooked men up to a labor pain simulator to mimic its effects. The experiment proves, in the battle of the sexes, men are the weaker sex when it comes to giving birth.

The hospital, located in the city of Jinan in eastern China’s Shandong Province, wanted to show men how much women suffer through childbirth, and to give men greater respect for what women go through. Most of the volunteers in the experiment are partners of pregnant women. “The event was aimed at creating awareness and more respect for childbearing women, especially highlighting the entire laborious nine-month process leading up to birth,” a hospital spokesman told Central European News (CEN), the Daily Mail reported.

Women know when they are ready to give birth when they begin to feel contractions. This is the body’s way of pushing the baby down the birth canal and out into the world. According to the Mayo Clinic, the contractions of labor are easy to identify because they become more frequent, intense, and regular. They can be accompanied by an upset stomach, cramps, or diarrhea with pains commonly reported in the abdomen or lower back or both and perhaps pain in the upper thighs.

To mimic this, technicians stimulated muscles in the men’s abdomen with electric shocks to make them contract and give them sharp pains, which led to various reactions. Dad-to-be Guang Liao told CEN, “My wife is expecting a baby in three months, and we had a row when I told [her] not to make such a fuss. When she found out about this project, she told me that I had to sign up for it so I also know what it was all about.” The expectant dad confessed the experiment made him more open-minded, saying “It was really incredibly painful, and I only had it for a few minutes. If it went on for hours, I don’t know if I’d be able to bear it.”

This isn’t the first time men have signed up to experience the pain of childbirth. In 2013, Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno, Dutch television hosts of “Guinea Pigs” opted to experience simulated labor contractions by yelling and clutching their abdomens in great pain. The men used electro-stimulations to simulate contractions so they could experience the distress for themselves with electrodes attached to their abdomens, The Huffington Post reported.