No, I meant objectively false, as I said.
And here is why it's not possible for your explanation to be true:
Yes, it does. It doesn't say "and they lied to Pharaoh and said", no, but here's what it does say:
Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah;and he said, “When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.”But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive?”And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.”Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty.And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them.So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.” - Exodus 1:15-22
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus1:15-22&version=NKJV
Verse 15, Pharaoh speaks to Shiphrah and Puah (two Hebrew midwives)
Verse 16, he commands them to kill the male children, but let the female children live, as they do their duties as midwives
Verse 17, the midwives did not do what Pharaoh told them to do, and did not kill the male children,
as they did their duties as midwives
Verse 18, Pharaoh asks them why they didn't do what he said
Verse 19, the midwives answer Pharaoh, telling him a lie, that the Hebrew women give birth faster than the egyptian women.
Verse 20, God rewards the midwives for their defense of the innocent, and the number of Israelites grows
Verse 21, a more explicit statement of God rewarding the midwives for their actions, giving them families of their own.
Derf, have you ever been present for the birth of a human being? I have. It took several hours, and the mother was in the hospital room overnight the night before giving birth. There were plenty of signs that she was getting ready to give birth, even hours before it happened.
Hebrew women. Egyptian women. All of them are human beings. They aren't going to vary that much when it comes to bodily processes.
On top of that, and arguably more importantly, the Bible explicitly states that the midwives delivered the male children alive. Meaning they were ipso facto delivering the children, and not "arriving late to the delivery," as what they said, that the babies pop out of their mothers' wombs "before the midwives come to them," would necessarily imply!
The passage literally does not leave any room for any other interpretation besides that they lied to Pharaoh!