Now as to the origin of the word; we have seen above that Rochefort was the first to use the expression faire la couvade.  This author, or at least the author (see Barbier, Ouvrages anonymes) of the Histoire naturelle ... des Iles Antilles, which was published for the first time at Rotterdam, in 1658, 4to., writes:  “C’est qu’au meme tems que la femme est delivree le mary se met au lit, pour s’y plaindre et y faire l’acouchee:  coutume, qui bien que Sauvage et ridicule, se trouve neantmoins a ce que l’on dit, parmy les paysans d’vne certaine Province de France.  Et ils appellent cela faire la couvade.  Mais ce qui est de facheus pour le pauvre Caraibe, qui s’est mis au lit au lieu de l’acouchee, c’est qu’on luy fait faire diete dix on douze jours de suite, ne luy donnant rien par jour qu’vn petit morceau de Cassave, et un peu d’eau dans la quelle on a aussi fait boueillir un peu de ce pain de racine....  Mais ils ne font ce grand jeusne qu’a la naissance de leur premier enfant ...” (II. pp. 607-608).

Lafitau (Maeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, I. pp. 49-50) says on the authority of Rochefort:  “Je la trouve chez les Iberiens ou les premiers Peuples d’Espagne ... elle est aujourd’hui dans quelques unes de nos Provinces d’Espagne.”

The word couvade, forgotten in the sense of lying-in bed, recalled by Sacombe, has been renovated in a happy manner by Dr. Tylor.

As to the custom itself, there can be no doubt of its existence, in spite of some denials.  Dr. Tylor, in the third edition of his valuable Early History of Mankind, published in 1878 (Murray), since the last edition of The Book of Ser Marco Polo, has added (pp. 291 seqq.) many more proofs to support what he had already said on the subject.

There may be some strong doubts as to the couvade in the south of France, and the authors who speak of it in Bearn and the Basque Countries seem to have copied one another, but there is not the slightest doubt of its having been and of its being actually practised in South America.  There is a very curious account of it in the Voyage dans le Nord du Bresil made by Father Yves d’Evreux in 1613 and 1614 (see pp. 88-89 of the reprint, Paris, 1864, and the note of the learned Ferdinand Denis, pp. 411-412).  Compare with Durch Central-Brasilien ... im Jahre 1884 von K.v. den Steinen.  But the following extract from Among the Indians of Guiana.... By Everard im Thurn (1883), will settle, I think, the question: 

“Turning from the story of the day to the story of the life, we may begin at the beginning, that is, at the birth of the children.  And here, at once, we meet with, perhaps, the most curious point in the habits of the Indians; the couvade or male child-bed.  This custom, which is common to the uncivilized people of many parts of the world, is probably among the strangest ever invented by the human brain.