Instagram As if Bristol Palin doesn't have enough to think about, what with being a mother of two now.
Alas, there are still those who won't let the 25-year-old be, even on what should be a happy, non-partisan occasion, so Sarah Palin's eldest daughter had to take to social media in order to "prove" that daughter Sailor Grace was born on Dec. 23 and not...
Some other time?
It's not as if anyone was trying to figure out whether the single mom had conceived out of wedlock, so the random speculation that she actually gave birth a month earlier had to have something to do with...
Hmm. Actually, all it proves is that people are just as bored in 2016 as they were last year.
But Bristol's baby-birth-date drama is hardly the first time that the Internet has whipped up much ado about nothing with regard to a celebrity pregnancy or the birth of a celeb kid. Remember these seven wild conspiracy theories?
1. Beyoncé: The caressing of the obviously natural bump in the perfectly draped mini dress at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards just wasn't enough for some people. When Queen Bey was pregnant with now almost 4-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, some people thought they'd caught her in a gotcha moment when, as she was sitting down for an interview, her bump appeared to fold in on itself rather than protrude as any self-respecting bump should. (Ever watched fabric fold, people?) So despite all of the reality pointing to pregnant, Bey was shadowed by this faking-it rumor—which only peaked when she went into labor and maternity ward security was at an all-time high.
Um, if a bunch of loons were convinced that your pregnancy was an elaborate prank, wouldn't you want the maternity wing on lockdown so you could have contractions in peace?
"That was crazy," Beyonce reflected later to People. "It wasn't hurtful, it was just crazy. [I thought] 'Where did they come up with this?'"
2. Kim Kardashian: Not once, but twice Kim Kardashian was the target of "she's not really pregnant" rumors—despite her being the celebrity who perhaps most embraced her expectant-mom bod more than anyone ever! Alas, Kim's always been damned if she does and damned if she doesn't, so while some were ogling her pregnancy curves from every angle, still others were convinced she was faking it.
"I secretly loved the rumors I was faking my pregnancy bc I was so skinny! LOL Well can't hide it now!" Kim tweeted back in July while pregnant with son Saint West. "5 month (20weeks) and 20lbs up."
3. Coco Austin: Also another mommy-to-be who at first was considered too small on the unofficial bump-judgment chart to really be pregnant. "When I posted that Instagram last week showing off my baby 'lump,' I had to push out to show something because some people still don't think I'm pregnant. I don't have anything to prove to anyone. My stomach is growing slowly," Ice-T's missus, then at six months along, wrote in a blog post for E! Online in August. And what do you know, on Nov. 28 Coco gave birth to daughter Chanel.
4. Nicole Kidman: The Oscar winner has been most open about welcoming daughter Faith Margaret, her second child with Keith Urban, via gestational carrier. So it doesn't really make sense that she would have gone to the trouble of wearing a fake bump to make people think she was pregnant with Faith's big sister, Sunday Rose, to hide that she too was born via surrogate. But try telling that to those who were convinced that the statuesque star didn't carry Sunday herself and in fact it was sister Antonia (whose stomach remained flat as a board during the period in question) who did the honors.
5. Danielle Jonas: Your eyes did not deceive you, Kevin Jonas' wife was all sorts of pregnant with daughter Alena Rose before giving birth to her in February 2014. None of which stopped some from spending a lot of time piecing together a case as to why she was faking it.
6. Katie Holmes: It probably had a bit more to do with her quirky husband at the time than with her, but despite the actress' frequent forays outside while pregnant, there was still a nagging debate as to where Suri Cruise really came from. Nearly 10 years later, we're guessing that the child who looks exactly like what would happen if Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise had a baby (what do you know?!) came from exactly where babies come from. We can show you a diagram if you'd like.
P.S. Suri's going to be 10 this year! Mind on the blown side.
7. Sarah Palin: So here we are again. When Palin, then governor of Alaska, burst onto the national stage in 2008 after Sen. John McCain picked her as his running mate in the presidential race, she was just a few months removed from giving birth to her fifth child, son Trig. Or was she?
As if there wasn't enough for the world to talk about at the time, a heck of a conspiracy theory grew around the idea that Bristol was actually Trig's mom and Sarah was covering for her then-not-quite-18-year-old daughter. Who was pregnant at the time anyway with son Tripp, who was born in December 2008, so... Overall, the conspiracy was that Bristol actually became a mother of two when Tripp was born, meaning she had to have gotten started with the family planning even earlier than they were willing to admit.
But we're going to tip the scales in the Palin family's favor and conclude, once again, that people—especially conspiracy theorists with a political angle—have too much time on their hands.
Congrats again to Bristol on the recent birth of her second child, Sailor Grace, who joins her first, Tripp, in the family fold.
Anne Hathaway would do best to carefully document her pregnancy every step of the way—just to avoid any confusion later!