Why buying a car is like trying to have a baby

Have you ever noticed what happens when you buy a new car? You can spend your entire life driving along happily oblivious to all the screaming yellow MINI Coopers sharing the highways and byways of life with you. But the second you start shopping for one, that's all you see. MINIs at the grocery store. At the movie theatre. In your neighbor's garage four doors down, for crying out loud.

That's exactly what happens when you decide to try to get pregnant. First of all, the entire female population of North America is suddenly waddling around with a baby belly, often behind a stroller containing yet another offspring still in diapers. And for good measure, every female cousin, sister-in-law and sorority sister you have who hasn't previously given birth will suddenly get knocked up and send you an invitation to a baby shower. Or – gasp! – ask you to host it for her.

And then there are the symptoms of a possible pregnancy. Phantom symptoms, as they're called. Sore boobs. Nausea. Cramps. Heightened sense of smell. The list goes on and on, and often includes some rather bizarre claims. Fever blisters? Smelly pee? Sneezing? The irony is, all of these symptoms are part and parcel of living in a female body capable of reproduction. Our hormones fluctuate each month, which causes things like sore boobs. Nausea. And cramps. And even men experience fever blisters and sneezing, and they rarely get pregnant. As for the smelly pee, if you ask my friend Sniffer, that can almost always be attributed to eating asparagus for dinner the night before.

See, that's the thing. These symptoms have been there all along, but you only really start noticing them now that you're shopping for the car. 

What it boils down to is there's simply no foolproof way to know you're pregnant until a pregnancy test tells you you are, in fact, knocked up. (Unless you're one of those oddball cases who go into labor in an airplane bathrooms at 35,000 feet with no previous indication that you are with child. Your first sign of pregnancy might be when a full-term baby falls out of your crotch.) 

So, kick the tires. Take your sister's baby for a test drive. I sincerely hope everyone out there shopping for a baby will get the keys to their brand new "mini" very soon.