All signs point to “Baby On Board.” You’ve got sore, swollen breasts, an absence of menstruation, a sudden and violent need for naps every fifteen minutes, a tendency to vomit if you look at cheese, an early pregnancy test that reads “YOU ARE PREGNANT”…

Could it be?

Maybe.

Before we offer any congratulations, let’s face facts: you’re almost certainly not pregnant at all. Anecdotal evidence shows that most pregnancy tests result in false positives. These can occur any number of ways: maybe you mixed your urine with that of a pregnant mare, or you drew an extra line on your dipstick with a pink magic marker. False positives are lower when your blood test is performed at a lab, but the number shoots back up when the lab technicians are drunk—which they usually are.

In order to not waste your time or ours, let’s examine what you are instead of pregnant!

Instead of pregnant, you are:

1. Fat
2. Hysterical
3. Recovering from a plate of bad clams
4. Hiding a pillow under your shirt
5. A snake that recently swallowed a full-grown ewe
6. Pumpkin costume!
7. Unable to button your pants
8. Nurturing an eight-pound subcutaneous grapefruit
9. A man

Are you assuming you’re pregnant because your period is late? If this is the case, picture us sighing and slapping at our foreheads. Periods indicate nothing! Slave to no one, they arrive and depart by their own mysterious rules. Mrs. Kennedy welcomes her period but once a year, although this is undoubtedly due to her diet of raw garlic and distilled lemon juice. Alice prefers not to menstruate, and therefore holds it in. Our research (Redbook, YM) has failed to show that menstruation is at all related to the baby-making organs. If your period is late, have you considered these possibilities?

1. You’ve been huffing too much airplane glue
2. You haven’t examined your undergarments in over two weeks
3. You’re six feet tall and you weigh 85 pounds
4. You’re eight years old
5. Your maid has your period for you
6. You impulsively mined uranium without wearing lead underpants
7. You’re a man

If, despite all these much more likely possibilities, you still insist that you are with child, then: congratulations! We think.