Ep91: Alicia Andrzejewski and 16th Century Pregnancy Tests

When you study the life of William Shakespeare, one of the first facts you will learn pretty quickly is that his wife, Anne Hathaway was pregnant when she and William were married. We know she was pregnant based on the birth records of Susanna Shakespeare, who was born just about 5 months after the November 2, 1582 marriage of Anne and William Shakespeare. But as anyone who has had children will tell you, until you are far enough along to start feeling the baby, you use a pregnancy test to confirm if a woman is pregnant, which brings up two important questions about the life of Shakespeare: Did Anne Hathaway know she was pregnant when she got married? Did William know it, too? And if they did know, what did they use to find out? Here to answer all of these questions and to help us explore the history of prenatal medicine, and 16th century pregnancy tests, is our guest, Alicia Andrzejewski.