It has recently come to my attention that my wife is eight months pregnant. The astute reader will no doubt discern that, yes, this means that my wife and I used to have sex. At any rate, I have decided that our current circumstances present the perfect opportunity to do what any responsible adult and citizen of the world would do: conduct experiments on my pregnant wife. After all, we’ve all heard that pregnancy has certain effects on the human body, but how do we really know?

So let’s address these pregnancy myths one-by-one, and sort the facts from the fiction.

Myth #1: Pregnancy Makes Women More Emotional

Throughout the course of the pregnancy, which I was definitely aware of all along and didn’t just find out about, I’ve been taking careful notes of my wife’s behavior, and a few incidents stand out above the rest:

1. About a month into the pregnancy, she woke up at three in the morning, declared she had a dream about Calvin and Hobbes, and burst into tears.
2. Upon learning that Finding Nemo came out 13 years ago, she burst into tears.
3. She has literally cried within the past 15 minutes.

Findings: Inconclusive. Even when she’s not pregnant, she cries at Hallmark commercials and when cat pictures show up in her Facebook feed, so differentiating her emotional state under the influence of pregnancy hormones from her baseline is…problematic.

Myth #2: Pregnancy Causes Food Cravings

A few incidents come to mind from the second trimester:

1. She briefly became obsessed with waffles. I would ordinarily dismiss this of being the result of the fact that waffles are awesome, but since she was actually willing to purchase and eat Eggo waffles – and somehow managed to keep these godawful crap-sponges down – this seems unusual.
2. She ate an entire pot of mac and cheese in a single sitting. Twice.
3. She decided she wanted frickles after we had already eaten dinner. She then spent the entire evening searching Instagram for pictures of frickles.
4. She dropped a pineapple chunk on the cat, then ate it anyway. She does not like pineapples.

Findings: Inconclusive. To be honest, I’m struggling to believe that she ate Eggo waffles on purpose, so I can only conclude that this was some sort of practical joke that never reached fruition because, upon realizing what she had done, she decided it would be best to never speak of it again and hope that I’d forgotten.

Myth #3: Pregnancy Induces Nausea

During the first trimester, she became so unable to tolerate rich food that she spent a week eating nothing but toast. At the end of the week, she binged on cinnamon rolls.

Findings: Inconclusive. My wife loves toast. She was probably faking it.

Myth #4: My Wife is Eight Months Pregnant

My wife insists that she is, in fact, nine months pregnant. She seems annoyed when I question this assertion, primarily on the basis that the idea of her being nine months pregnant is too terrifying to contemplate. To support my position, I have pointed to a calendar where the subject’s due date – November 14 – is circled on the calendar. In response, she keeps pointing back to some random date – October 14 – even though its circle is crossed out and labeled “Definitely not the due date.” She has been unreceptive to arguments pertaining to the fact that we clearly need more time.

Findings: Inconclusive. I’m pretty confident that this one is false, but I’ll humor her.

Myth #5: Pregnancy Results in Babies

This is the most widespread myth of all. Certainly, Big Health would have you believe that the probable outcome of pregnancy is a baby, but my wife has been pregnant for almost a year now, and I have to tell you, we haven’t seen even a single baby yet. Honestly, I think that this one is a lie, but for good measure, I’ll wait until the twelve month mark to debunk this particular myth.

Findings: Inconclusive.

To recap: science is hard. In any event, hopefully my findings will prove useful to any of the countless men and women who are, or might soon become, pregnant. Good luck!