She showed her 90-year-old grandfather a pregnancy test — but he misread the 'positive' result and reacted the wrong way
He was more worried about his granddaughter spreading the infection further
An expecting woman handed her grandparents a positive pregnancy test, expecting happy tears. But what could've been an emotional reaction turned serious when her 90-year-old grandpa mistook it for a COVID-19 test and stared at her in utter confusion. Nicole Tham (@itsjustnicole) posted the hilarious pregnancy reveal on April 10. In just four days, her video has received 376k views on her Instagram.
When Tham handed her grandpa the pregnancy kit, he gazed at it in confusion. In fact, he assumed she had COVID and was more concerned that the infection would spread further. "You have COVID — why did you come [and] see me?" she revealed, noting his reaction. Tham then handed her grandparents her ultrasound scans, hoping they would finally catch on, but nothing worked. "Why so black?" her grandma asked, still struggling to read between the lines. Along with the pregnancy kit, Tham had also placed a baby bodysuit, which, surprisingly, her grandpa thought she had bought for her grandmother. "Pregnancy reveal gone wrong," she confessed.
Tham couldn't blame her grandparents for not comprehending the obvious. She realized that before ultrasounds and pregnancy tests became commercial, people had odd ways to detect pregnancy. In fact, Tham's grandma said she realized she was pregnant only when her waist grew by five inches, and she no longer fit into her pants. Well, she wasn't lying because that's how most people from her generation knew they had conceived without taking any tests. In response, Tham's grandpa joking asked, judging by waist size, "So you’ve been pregnant the last 20 years?"
It may sound shocking, but women depended on the "Hogben Test" and used frogs to check if they were pregnant in the 1950s. Doctors would collect a urine sample and inject some of it into the hind leg of an African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis). Now, by the next morning, if the frog had laid eggs, then it meant the woman was pregnant. "Among the 295 tests that I have done so far and in which 2,112 frogs were used, I have not seen one clear positive that did not indicate a pregnancy. There were a few negative results which, when repeated after a fortnight, became positive, but I do not think that these can be regarded as failures," wrote Dr. Edward R. Elkan, in the British Medical Journal.
Unlike today, people had to wait for at least a day, extending up to weeks, to know if they were pregnant. But that changed when Margaret Crane, a graphic designer, invented "Predictor," the first-ever at-home pregnancy test, according to Smithsonian magazine. She believed that a woman should be the first one to know about their pregnancy, and not wait for weeks for confirmation.
Crane went to work for a long time, inventing a proper design, but failed every time until she saw a paper clip holder and realized it could work as a compact stand to hold pieces of a home pregnancy test. She then issued a patent for her design, but never received any compensation for her breakthrough invention. Notably, although Crane invented the first at-home pregnancy test in the 1970s, it took several years for them to enter the market.
Meanwhile, people online couldn't stop laughing at the grandparents' reaction. For instance, @mimingsha shared, "I had an opposite situation. I showed my mom my positive Covid test, and she asked if I'm pregnant." Similarly, @alicedby pointed out, "What a witty last statement by Grandpa and what a good sense of humor by Grandma."
You can follow Nicole Tham (@itsjustnicole) on Instagram for more family-related content.
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