Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Pregnancy Tests

Episode Date: February 20, 2014

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We pee on EVERYTHING. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books.

One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around. The medicines, the medicines, the escalators, my cop, for the mouth Welcome to solbona, Zayn Meral tour of misguided medicine. I am your co-host Justin Nackaroy. I'm Sydney Said we got we got baby fever Nackaroy household. That's true. I call it that now because you're pregnant We had baby fever and then I literally had some sort of viral illness as well. Yeah, every kind of fever you can get. Double dose. Yeah.

You know, it's a lot harder to be sick when you're pregnant than when you're not. That's cause you're the baby's eating everything you need to get strong. Get all those nutrients, all that vitamin C is in the baby now. Plus one, as we've taken to calling the baby because we don't know what the baby is yet. And I'm trying to refrain from saying it.

It's a plus one, right? We're you and we alternate pronouns, depending on our whim. But anyway, what my dreams were the night before. Yeah. No, I'm kidding. No, no, no. No, no, no. But Sid, you've been getting a lot of, I feel like you've been getting a lot of heat,

a lot of attention since the pregnancy thing, lots of people want to ask you how you feel or telling you to rest up or stuff. Yeah, is that a problem for you? Well, I just, I can't help but wonder. Like, you took a pregnancy test, okay. Pregnant, it says, I don't know. We saw something in your stomach that looked baby like,

so I guess the jury's out for another six months or so, but. Well, I mean, we had an ultrasound. Health, ultrasound. Oh, it was ultrasound. I mean, you remember, like we saw, I was ultra, then we posted on the internet, like we tweeted it.

It was ultra sketchy, I think, because I didn't recognize it. It didn't look like me. I don't know. Did you see the size of that head? That was a macaroid cranium. There is no doubting that that much to my misfortune is a giant macaroid head. Sydney, I guess my concern is, how do I, how do I, how do we know I'm not pregnant?

Well, I mean, I guess there's, there's the obvious. Uh, maybe like the seal document called junior, starring our horse and eager. Do you know what a documentary is? Uh, I guess what I'm saying is I want to run some tests for my potential. There I say likely pregnancy. Okay, well, we'll leave aside the fact that you are male. Yes, junior. No, okay. You do not have a uterus. Okay, Jerry's out. I've never seen it. Maybe you've seen inside me. I haven't. So I guess Jerry's out on on that one. Nowhere to house said, child, and let alone,

I would hope you would prefer to avoid the birth process. Yeah, I don't know where to. For you that may be a little, I don't know where it's gonna come from. Or a lot upsetting really for everyone. Everyone in that delivery room is gonna leave. Pretty scarred. Pretty damaged, pretty damaged by that. How can we test to make sure that I am not pregnant?

Well, historically speaking. Historically speaking, well that's a good question, Justin. People have been wanting to find out if they were pregnant, you know, as long as people have been pregnant, which is a really long time. Yeah. The longest.

You know, the, and what I think is funny about it is that there's a surefire way to find out if you're pregnant. Wait. Just wait. Just wait. And, you know, they don't, again, because we talk about this a lot, because so much of the medical field was dominated by men for so long. There are all these really that I'm going to tell you about cumbersome ways of finding

out if you're pregnant or not. When I bet you women just knew, I mean, you don't know instantly. I'm not going to, that's not like I woke up the morning that we found out I was pregnant and said, I'm pregnant. I can feel it. It's in me. I know it. But yet, I mean, you know, I'm pregnant, I can feel it. It's in me, I know it. But, I mean, you know, things start changing.

I mean, all of a sudden, I don't like the taste of Dieter-Peper, that's got to mean something. It's weird. I love milk. Crazy about the stuff. I am not sad at all that I can't drink beer. Yeah, that's the weirdest part. How weird is that?

Very, very weird. So Sydney, taking back BC early olden times. Ye olden times. So one of the oldest known ways to test for pregnancy, and I should clarify, people figured out pretty quickly that, you know what, babies come from somewhere down there on the woman, you know, region, anatomically speaking, down there. Clinical term. And urine comes from down there. So urine may be able to give us a clue.

They both come from the same general vicinity. Right, that was the idea. So one of the oldest known methods was for a woman to urinate on both wheat and barley seeds. Now this would serve two functions. It would ruin the barley. It would ruin the barley and ruin the wheat. If you wouldn't ruin your neighbor's barley, this is the primo way to do it. This is not what to make beer out of. This violates the German beer purity. if the barley grew, well, first of all, if any of the seeds germinated, you were pregnant.

Okay. So that was the first belief. If the seeds started to germinate, you were pregnant. And then depending on which seeds germinated, you could actually also tell the sex of the baby. So if the barley grows, it's a boy, and if the wheat grows, it's a girl. If neither grow, you're not pregnant. Perfect. That seems like it would take a while. Yeah. By then, it seems like

there would be some other signs, right? I think you would know. You know, it was funny is that they repeated this this test in the 60s. They they actually like did a study to see does this work. And the urine of a pregnant woman will promote growth in seeds of any kind, 70% of the time. And we've been wasting our money on fertilizer. Instead, pregnant ladies just go to heat. Just get out there and have a good garden. On your barley wheat garden.

And as these green peppers are delicious, what is your secret? And they did, they compared it to just to non-pregnant women's urine as well as men's urine to make sure it wasn't just, you know, because we know that there are some things in urine that are good for soil anyway. So it's not just that, that they, that the theory at the time was, I don't know, maybe estrogen, but who knows. But for some reason, there, there may have been some truth to that Wow good job, age

Another thing that people took advantage of when trying to figure out if woman was pregnant was the fact they did observe And women probably confirmed that they tend to get nauseous While they're pregnant, mm-hmm as you may well remember early on, all of my nausea. Yeah. It was a considerable amount. Hey, this is... There's a pro tip for you if you haven't tried a preggie pops.

I was gonna say the same thing. Really? Sympatic. Plug those preggie pops. Yeah, baby. They're...we are. Okay. They're safe.

They're tasty. Yeah, they're...I don't know, they seem to work for you. They work. They work. And like B12 and stuff, right? Never had to take a prescription, man. Yeah, pretty good. Never threw up either. High five.

Hey, there we go. That wasn't a very good high five. Can we try again? Okay. All I did did that, that was good. All right. That was usually we missed. Gonna have a good high five and kid.

You could also, so the Egyptians took advantage of this nausea by, okay, so if you thought I was pregnant, here's what you could do. Go downstairs to the living room, because we've got wood floor. Move the carpet out of the way. And then what I want you to do is just pour a bunch of beer all over the floor and then mash up some dates and spread those all over the floor too. And then I will go on.

And then you just wait for the wet band that's just a show up. They slide right in it. And you're home is safe. And then you swing some paint buckets and then they're for it. Perfect. No, then I come down and sit in the floor in the middle of the beer date mash. And if I throw up a lot, I'm pregnant. They include the heavy on if you throw up a lot. Listen, you'll know if it's just a regular throw up.

Because you're sitting in a motion of fear and day. Is it possible that like that maybe it wasn't like mysticism or medicine. It's just like that was the grossest thing they could come up with. And so like maybe it would just make you throw up. Which says a lot for Egypt and the quality of their food and beverage, if the grossest thing they could come up with was mashed up dates and beer. You gave beer some sketchy looks when you're first pregnant. Well, I will say that.

I will say that the smell of alcohol for the first time in my life did not make me happy. Interesting. But yeah, but I think, you know, just take a look at like super sloppy double there. Today we could probably come up with some pretty heinous stuff to sit in the middle of. Yeah, lots of other nausea and losing things. That's one of our great advances in 2014.

I think cavemen would really be stunned by the amount of things we could come up with for you to sit in and throw up in. We really know how to make people puke now. I don't even worry about that. Here's a great segue for that. Speaking of making you want a puke, the Greeks had a great idea, which was put, you could put an onion in your vagina before you go to bed. And if you're, if you're lovely bride Vanessa these onions are delicious. What is your secret? If you're lovely bride wakes up with onion breath, then she's not pregnant. But is the theory that the baby is like eating the onion vapor? That is it? That they thought that when you were pregnant your

womb was closed. So the smell of the onion could not pass all the way up through from your vagina to your mouth. Okay. But that if the womb was open, because there's no baby in it, then you'd wake up with onion breath. Okay. Which was weird because they also advocated,

which I think is a little nicer anyway, is just put some perfumed linens down in the vaginal area. Yeah, why don't you put aba, here's the idea, maybe some experiment, if you're going to do something. Well, but then my understanding from what I read is that if your mouth and nose start to smell of that perfume that you have applied to the to the anatomical down there region that you are pregnant, which is the total inverse of the onion test.

Okay, that's a little weird. I don't understand. It's almost as if they were making it up without any scientific basis. It wasn't that it had nothing to do with any science. Hypocrites had a better idea. I think at least this would not bother me too much. So if you skip a period, which was accepted, we even knew back then that if you did not have your menstrual cycle, you may be pregnant.

Maybe, maybe not, we weren't sure. But if you skipped a period, you should that night before you go to bed, drink a mixture of honey and water. And then when you wake up in the morning, if you've got some like stomach bloating and cramping, then you're pregnant. A mixture of honey and water. Now, why would that make you crampy and bloaty? I don't know.

They're trying anything with honey. I mean, something was up with honey. It's fairly benign. Sure. Have a nice thing. Kind of delicious kind of soothing. Yeah. I would say that I mean your chances of waking up with a bloated crampy stomach are always increased when you're pregnant. I mean that's just from my brief experience. So I don't know. Maybe that's just maybe he's

just hedging his bets. Drink this. If you feel nauseous and your breasts are tender, you may be pregnant. drink this if you feel nauseous and your breasts are tender, you may be pregnant. And it should be noted that through all these different eras, they comment on a good doctor will also ask some basic questions about the woman's health status and symptoms to figure out if she's pregnant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like your psychic friend asking, like predicting the Ivoraki marriage after you asked like a Few basic questions about the status of it. I noticed you're not wearing your wedding ring and Psychically, I think that you're having some issues

In the middle ages we've talked about this before in the urine episode that talked about this before in the urine episode that people got really obsessed with Euro-Mancy with women with with with urine. Remember we talked about this with the study of urine and they would just look at the urine and smell it and taste it sometimes and the way to tell if a woman was pregnant is that the urine would look clear and a pale lemon color is what I read and also cloudy. I think I, okay, see this one, I might be able to pass this one. I might be able to, I might be able to, I think I could generate some clear pale lemon color. Wait, okay, so wait, if it's clear, but also cloudy, it has like, okay, so I didn't, I should have clarified.

So it's clear and pale in color, but then there's a cloudiness on top like that comes to the top of it. Go ahead. Basically rich, from me head. From me head to the urine. Okay. Like a good genus if. Sure.

Beyond just the color and the head on your urine. Some other ideas they had at the time, you could put a needle in a cup of a woman's urine, and if she was pregnant, it would rust. You could sprinkle some sulfur in the urine, and worms will appear if she's pregnant. Whoa. I don't know if they mean like it looks like worms

or literal worms are gonna appear. Because your urine can create life. Okay. Well, this would have been, I mean, spontaneous generation. I mean, I've heard that the whole maggots in the meat, they left a piece of meat out and eventually there are maggots on it

and so they thought the maggots came from the meat. Oh yeah. Instead of, you know, flies laidots came from the meat instead of you know flies laid their eggs on the meat. Oh yeah. So I mean that wouldn't have been that far off at the time. Okay. That's not real. No, it's not. No, it's not. It's so crazy. It's so crazy. In wrong. Faulty theory. We got that one wrong. We know better now. I also like this one. You could, so take a ribbon. Okay, I got my ribbon. Okay, and you got your cup of pee. Okay.

Okay, dip the ribbon into the pee, and then hold it up to your nose. Okay. If we're testing you for pregnancy. We're, if you're the one whoever we're testing for pregnancy hold it up to their nose. Oh, I'm nauseous and gagged.

Okay, now you're pregnant. Okay. So my theory is that if you hold up a ribbon dipped in P to my nose at any time, it's going to hook me out a little bit. Yeah, now I do, I will admit to cheating on that particular test. I read ahead, but still. Again, I think this is playing on the fact that a surprising number of things made me nauseous.

Yeah. When I first found out I was pregnant, and we just plain mean tricks on women. And a surprising number of things made you cry too. If they had had, it's too bad they didn't have staples commercials back then, because then you could watch that, then they could have just played it and if they cried, they're pregnant. Listen, it was a really moving staples commercial. Okay. What I can't understand. You can't possibly understand. What else do we got said?

There was also the latch test back in the days when all doors had metal latches on them. You would you could take a metal latch off of a door. I suppose you're exposed for the night. I don't know what that's gonna do for a safe. I hope that you're done with the door. When you're done with that door. This is my P door. I get to put my hand on your P.

Well, yeah, that's true. Cause once you use your metal latch, you're gonna put it in a bucket of P. Cause everything else we're gonna put in a bucket of P. Okay, wait, all right, turn it. Do you know that you had to be to fill the bucket? Well, I mean, I guess it could have been a bowl, a small bucket of pee.

Something that would enough pee to cut, to completely submerge the lat. I feel bad for these pregnant women, they're supposedly pregnant women. Like, there's a lot of demand for their pee. They had to pee a lot. There's a lot of different tests. We had a lot of, we're gonna need you to pee five

or six different gallons, or coming up with new stuff all the time. Well, I mean, that works because luckily, if there is one thing that I've been able to do constantly since I've become pregnant, it's pee. Pea, a lot. Yeah, a lot of pee. That's never a problem.

Never an issue. No, especially with my insatiable thirst for milk and lemonade. Hahaha. Guy, I don't know, go figure. So you take the metal latch, you put it in the bucket of pee, you leave it there all night, and if there is an imprint of the latch in the bucket, when you take it out the next morning, the woman's pregnant, what in the world?

Why? The outline of the latch. The outline of the latch in the bucket? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. It didn't specify what material the bucket would have to be. So that made me, I don't know what kind of reaction we're looking for. What is that?

Donnie Freak, who found this test out. Who was like, you know, I was just bruising my collection of pea buckets with latches in them. You all, you, you mistress. And I couldn't have how, but notice that your specific bucket had an imprint. So what I'm thinking is, you're not. Yeah, who was?

It was E-O-L-R Kelly, of course. It was E-O-R Kelly. It was E-O-R Kelly. A gracious Kelly. Question, what is ignition? We have not invented yet. How can you remix that, which does not exist? It probably has something to do with urine.

That's all we know for sure. One of the few methods that I found that did not have to do with pee was one doctor propose, we're still around the same time period, we're coming out of the middle ages. If you looked into a pregnant woman's eyes. Oh, I know this one. If you can see a pregnant woman's eyes. Oh, I know this one. You look, if you can see your unborn children in their eyes, you really love a woman. I was in a brine.

I had a brine. I was in a brine. I was in a brine. I was in a brine. I was in a brine. I was too old time you guys. You can't put whatever on me. No, this is not nearly so romantic. If her eyes look deep set and veey and her pupils are particularly small. Hey, and guys at home, let me just advise you that if you're looking for just the right moment to tell your wife her eyes are deep set, Vainey and their pupils are small, pregnancy is the perfect window to decide to broach that topic. Because let me tell you, I have never felt more attractive than I have for these last 15 or so weeks.

That's not true at all. In the 1900s, we finally figured out that there was, and I mean, I guess we knew on some level that there was something in urine that the P of a pregnant woman. We were getting there. We knew instinctively something in the urine that could tell us if a woman, if we just could figure it out, what is in there? What is some guy with like an ancient blackboard like crossing it out trying to connect all the dots.

I know it has to be here. It just as P equals pregnancy on the written on the born and giant letters. The question mark. He's scratching it up. Yeah, that's right. They said they knew that there was something in there. They started injecting human urine into a variety of animals to look for changes that might indicate that the woman was pregnant.

And basically at this point, we started to understand there was a hormone in there of some kind and this hormone. Obviously indicates pregnancy and will probably produce changes in other female creatures. So maybe that can be a way where we can figure it out. They could inject it into mice, into rabbits.

Some of the tests involve looking for the animal to go into heat So like if you could make the mice Randy then Yeah, and they were probably then the woman that you took the ear and from was probably pregnant One of the things that you may have heard of was that they would inject it into rabbits female rabbits wait and then unfortunately kill the rabbit, and dissect them and look at the ovaries, and look for changes in the ovaries

for evidence of ovulation and changes. Vanessa, this rabbit is delicious. What is your secret? Well, you'll never believe this. I inject urine. I injected my urine, and by the way, we're pregnant. We're pregnant. You didn't want.

It gave birth to the phrase and you may have heard the said before, and especially older television shows, the rabbit died as a euphemism for, I'm pregnant. The ironic thing about that, of course, is that they killed the rabbit either way. All the rabbits died. Rabbit always died. The rabbit always died. But when I was reading about that, because I'd heard that before when I was reading about that phrase, I also came across the mouse died as an alternative, which is obvious. And I killed the Easter bunny.

Aw, it's a little grim. I really wish in retrospect that that day that I saw that positive pregnancy test. I really wish I had come downstairs and said, honey, I killed the Easter bunny. That would have been a more interesting but not quite as uplifting conversation. I think that would have followed. I think you would have been confused and maybe concerned for my mental health and sad about the Easter Bunny. Hello. What? Easter's ruined.

You ruined Easter. Are you, I mean, what are you trying to tell me about your relationship with the Easter Bunny? I mean, you hasn't delivered a bath there for a few years. I'm sure I'll come around. You think he's just mad at you or something? Yeah. Or maybe my life doesn't believe her,

I don't know. It's not believers. He can sense not. Is the Easter Bunny a giant bunny? Is that your take on him then? I always imagine it's like the, not like the bipedal bunny. Like the horrific.

The horrific bipedal bunny. So you get to sit on the wall. I like the mansionedal bunny like the horrific bipedal bunny. So you get to sit on like a regular bunny just gigantic and look like red eyes like binicula not like not like the Donnie Darko bunny. No, not like that at all like the opposite in almost every way of the Donnie Darko bunny. I would say I like the binicula, but man, those are great books. We are so off topic, you've got to get us back on track. We need to read those though. I will day in, the solar stocks are going to...

I gave you an opening, woman walk through it. I think this is nice. In the 50s, they came up with a much more humane way of injecting urine into animals, injecting human urine into animals and looking for changes. At least this did not involve killing the animals. That's something. There was something called the Bufo test where you would inject human urine into a frog and if the frog produced eggs within 24 hours then the patient was pregnant.

Weird. That's really weird. Well, but I mean at least it didn't kill the brad. Okay, I do have to ask you said how would they know If it produced eggs without killing it Well, I think frogs lay eggs. Oh Like oh, that's right cuz they're in fibions. Yeah, I know that Right, isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, right? Well, I thought I knew that, but now you're making me who'd help myself.

No, no, no. It made sense to me. I thought that's a good idea, because the eggs are outside the body, like fish. And also frogs can percrete internally without external stimuli. That's what happened in Jurassic Park. Well, they can change sex.

Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. But I don't think that. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. But I don't think that was the basis of this test. I don't think any frogs were switching genders. I think they were just making eggs. Got it. Now, of course, today we have a pregnancy test that looks for a certain hormone called HCG, beta HCG.

That's the name of the hormone that your home pregnancy tests are looking for. And you know, it's in your urine and you can pee on a stick and it's really easy to find out. But before we get into what is real, today you will find, and I don't know how old any of these particular tests are, a lot of home pregnancy tests that are not real and I would not recommend, but I'm

going to tell you about them anyway. Okay, Sydney, I'm ready. So some of the most popular, you've probably heard of the Drainow test. Yeah, we looked at, we didn't perform that. We looked at that. This is my disclaimer. This is dangerous. Don't do it. Okay. Good. So I've said that. Do. This is dangerous. Don't do it.

Okay. Good. So I've said that. Do not do this. We didn't do it. No. I'm not planning on it. It's a bad idea.

The idea is that you mix your urine with some drain O. And the color it changes. It's not going to tell you if you're pregnant, where this is a test that assumes you already know if you're pregnant. But it's going to tell you if it's a boy or a girl. There are a couple problems with this. First of all, mixing Drain O with your urine is dangerous. They're chemicals.

We've covered that. When there was a medical, I believe it was a medical school repeated this test to see if it was real. And when they did it, they were wearing gloves and masks to protect themselves from all of the chemicals they were using. So this gives you an idea of how safe this is. Don't do it. The other problem is if you look online for this test, everywhere you look, it's a different

like key. Like if it turns blue, it's a girl, it turns green, it's a girl, it turns brown, it's a boy. That is not one of the signs of a quality test. No. So you wouldn't even know how to interpret it anyway. So it's dangerous, it's smelly, it's a bad idea. I have no idea how it's interpreted.

I don't know how it's supposed to work. Don't do it. Got it. What else? Similarly, there's the bleach test. Mix your urine with bleach if it gets foamy or pregnant. Okay. Again, this is dangerous, don't do it.

Don't do it. Um, probably not as dangerous, but a little grody, the toothpaste test. You have to squirt some toothpaste in your cup of pee and then stir it around until it mixes through it. I don't even know how long it would take you to mix toothpaste into pee. That's gross. Don't find out. Please don't tell us.

I don't want to know. I don't want to know. It's okay. I'm comfortable not knowing. But if the mixture changes color or gets foamy or pregnant. All right. So they're just hedging their bets with that one. There's a popular pine salt test out there.

Pretty straightforward. Mix urine and pine salt. It turns orange or pregnant. Got it. Again, wouldn't recommend it. Dangerous. Mixing chemicals. There's chemicals in pee. It's a waste product people

This one probably not dangerous. Maybe a little more Ersy for the for the more organic home spun for the more organic listener take some dandelion leaves I always I pictured this I read about the session I pictured you doing it like outside like in the sunlight Probably have some really close friends, but inexplicably no family. One of those gatherings, everybody gathered around in very loose-fitting shirts, I imagine.

I pictured it in those douche commercials, women running around outside, waiting around. You know, no, like, dude, waving around sheets and stuff. Yeah. So you take off the dandelion leaves, you put them on like a piece of plastic or something on the ground, like, just group them all together on something and then pee on them.

Done. What's supposed to happen? If red blisters appear on the leaves, if the leaves like blister and turn collar, then you're pregnant. Just test on that expensive price. They're like $3 as you get them in bulk. I think how calming this could be. Out by the creek, peeing on your dandelion leaves.

Sure. I don't know. I thought this was weird and again did not sound safe. So I couldn't find the same amounts anywhere, but you take some amount of Tylenol one or two were the most popular answers I saw. Mixed it with some amount of hydrogen peroxide, again every site had a different amount. And then once you grind them up, you mix in the hydrogen peroxide. It's all mixed together then you pee in it.

Got it. I'm peeing. If it turns blue, you're pregnant. Oh, I'm talking. If it turns any other color, you're not, I don't know how many other colors it's gonna turn. Any either way, again, this is not a good idea. Don't do that.

Hydro and peroxide in there. Another thing I found, again, a little more organic. If you miss a period, but you're not sure if it's because your period is irregular or because you're actually pregnant, you can do this test and if you aren't pregnant, it's going to trigger you to have a period. So you fill a bathtub with warm water, you pour in two cups of mustard powder. What?

Then you take a bath in it for 20 minutes, and then you do get to get out and shower off So you don't smell like mustard. Oh, thank God If your period comes in a day or two Clearly you aren't pregnant If a weaker to goes by and you still have a had your period. Okay, then you are Okay, test you had your shot, but that makes that makes no sense Well, if another weaker or two go by, I mean, yeah, I probably, I mean if you want to know that badly, spring for the test That's right for the test. I'll take a bath and muster batter. What's wrong with you?

Even grosser another one I found was mixed together a fourth cup of vinegar and a fourth cup of tuna juice leave it overnight Some way I don't know where you want to put that and the neighbor's house Not anywhere you're gonna have to smell it Not around our cats. We need to put it on a high shelf The next morning you add your first morning urine in and it will turn bright green if you're pregnant And the only other thing that I found currently is that you could always, if you have animals,

they could tell you if you're pregnant because... You ask them. They will, they'll tell you. They'll just tell you. They'll just... No, they... They'll give you a pet's eyes. They'll be a lot more attentive to pregnant women.

Okay, now that's legit. Our pets have been very to our cat, CJ, the only one that interacts with us, has been very affectionate towards you. I've noticed, not jealous, it's just, I've noticed. She has been very affectionate. I don't know that I would bank a pregnancy on whether or not your cats and dogs

have been more affectionate towards you. It does help that you are constantly drinking milk. You are in a constipated milk. I think that may be the, that's probably part of it. That may be the thing. And I'm eating a lotancy of milk. I think that may be the that may be the thing and I'm eating a lot more now too. So she stoked. There are there is one sign that was actually found a long time ago back in the 1900s early on called Chadwick's sign name for a doctor Chadwick who discovered it at around six to eight weeks of pregnancy. A woman's cervix, which you can't see from

the outside, by the way. But you can see on a pelvic exam, as well as possibly her labian vagina, can start to look a little like reddish blue or even kind of purple due to an increase in blood flow. And that is called Chadwick sign. So now, as you can imagine, this was not something that was routinely checked, especially back in more. I think there's actually the 1800s so back in more buttoned up times.

It's not something I would want, you know. I'm confused why we wasted the money on tests. I could have just checked that out for you. No problem. Well, it doesn't happen with every single woman and it's variable and how much of a color change there is. And PS, I can check myself out. You can't check your own cervix.

Well, you can't check. Well, how are you going to look at my cervix, honey? I'll just look for it. You'll look for it. I'll go to the place where it is in her body, wherever that may be. I will find it. Oh, sir, you will not. So I said, what's our like modern tests?

You said you mentioned HCG. So that's how your home pregnancy tests work. And that's actually how when you go to your doctor's office and pee in a cup, that's the same thing we're doing. We're just looking for this hormone HCG. We can also look forward in blood. So if you get a blood test, it's the exact same thing. We can just find it in lower levels so we could tell you a little sooner with a blood test.

And that's the main thing about all these tests you need to know. They can, of course, they can be wrong, they can be negative and be wrong. If they're positive, they're usually right. So if you take a home pregnancy test and it says you're pregnant, it's pretty, pretty likely that you're pregnant. There are a few exceptions, but pretty likely you're pregnant If you take one in your negative, you may need to wait a little bit because it depends on how high the level of hormone is The original home pregnancy test. I just think this is kind of cool. They've been looking I read they've been looking for one to display at the Smithsonian and they can't find one red, they've been looking for one to display at the Smithsonian and they can't find one. But because they, the first ones that they would let women buy and take home were these huge like chemistry sets that had a bunch of test tubes and different solutions.

They included a tube that had a glutinated like these like clotted sort of their group together. Red blood cells. And you had to add urine to them. I mean, it's crazy. And they had like droppers and mirrors and they to add urine to them. I mean, it's crazy and they had like, droppers and mirrors and they took two hours to do. But this was in 1977, so there are probably some people listening

who have seen these. I read that this Smithsonian would love to have one. That would have been much less charming if you had scampered from downstairs from the bathroom and said, good news, honey. You can walk away, dude. honey, it coagulated. Look at my chemistry. Is there this chemistry?

No, not there. No, no, no, okay. Two beakers over. Okay, let me turn off the buds and burn it. I'm wearing these giant goggles. Rubber gloves. They rubber gloves. Got my lab coat on.

Now they were very cumbersome. And if you shook them, like if you moved it too suddenly and startled it, they wouldn't work. If you didn't use your first morning, you're in, they didn't work very well. But nowadays, they're quite accurate, your home, home P tests, but you can always go check with your doctor if you're not sure. Or just, you know, wait a little bit. Don't get too anxious.

And you're going to have to wait less time than normal for a new episode of saw bones because we have another one for you on Tuesday. So I ordered a bit late this week. Sydney was under the weather. I think I'm through the worst of this plague so we should be on time next week. And as I was I know we said we were gonna do an episode on childbirth but as I started digging in you know pregnancy and childbirth it's a pretty big topic. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff. I thought I'd start with testing for pregnancy and realize we had a whole show's worth of stuff.

So, you know, we've got, we've got 40 weeks, 40 weeks for this baby. We've got a lot of shows. We can tell you about that. We're going to have more shows that normally actually come up for you because next month it will mark the beginning of the maximum fun drive or we'll be asking you to kick in the network and get some really cool stuff for yourself. In addition, including a bonus episode of Saw Bones and other shows of the maximum fun network. Speaking of those shows, you can find them all at maximumfun.org.

Shows like Judge John Hodgman, stop podcasting yourself, the goose down, Ono Ross and Carrie. My brother, my brother and me. Oh, thank you so much, Cindy. And many, many others. I want to thank everybody who tweeted about this show this week, people including Chelsea Manders, Ian Kelly, Jennifer Panic, Matt Paschal, Travis, Megan Williams, Mackenzie Walton,

Cory and Porter, Aaron Deal, Chris Mick Irish John, okay, Claire Tune, Kira Grayson, Morley, so many others. Thank you so much. We we sure appreciate you helping us spread the world. Thank you for all the well wishes. You know, we really appreciate that too. If you could ask somebody today, when you listen to this, whenever you listen to it, ask the folks who follow you on Twitter and Facebook to listen to our show. You can link them to www.saubernshow.com or directly to our iTunes page. Also thanks to the taxpayer to let us use their song Medicines in our opening and closing music.

You can go buy all their music and we'll. And you should do that. To go do that. And speaking of things you should do, make sure to join us again, it's Tuesday. Until then, I'm just back Roy. I'm Sydney Mathmore. And as always, don't drill a hole in it, eat your head. Alright!

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