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Not a SpinoffBabies show of ''[=~Dawson's Creek~=]'' (thankfully), but a subtrope of DawsonCasting. A one specifically about newborns, or at least TV "newborns". Whenever a supposedly just born child appears on TV, the baby you will see will actually be several months old. Put this down to a mixture of simple ethics, employment laws, and casting laws that make it unacceptable to cast a real newborn in such a role. This is because sound stages are hot, bright, stuffy, dirty places--not a great environment for a newborn infant prone to infection and unable to control body temperature. AndNowYouKnow.
This can have an unfortunate side effect, due to the fact that RealityIsUnrealistic, making a person's first encounter with a real newborn possibly {{squick}}y. Real newborns aren't clean looking gurgling bundles of cuteness. Real newborns are covered in things like blood, amniotic fluid, and other bodily substances, up to and including fecal matter. There is a chance they could be covered in a peach fuzz like substance called lanugo (an evolutionary remnant of when our ancestors were a lot hairier than we are now; most fetuses lose it before birth but obviously, a few don't). Their skin will usually have a red hue to it as well, and look somewhat "wrinkly", especially if they are considerably premature. On top of all this most newborns have noticeably deformed heads from the birth process since their skulls aren't yet closed and their bones are very flexible. To say nothing of the placenta that should be popping out with the babe. Even newborns that have been cleaned up and are a couple days old are generally UglyCute at best. It's been said that all babies look like WinstonChurchill.
In fiction, birth is a much cleaner, nicer ([[ScreamingBirth but still painful for the mother]]) process, and in American films and TV shows usually happens in a tent. The four month old tot pops out of his/her Mommy as clean as whistle and is bundled up.
This is a fairly ubiquitous trope so only aversions, subversions, inversions, parodies and the like should be added.
----
!!Examples
[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* {{Aversion}}: ''{{Children of Men}}'' used a CGI baby in the birth scene.
** Ditto for ''[[StarWars Revenge of the Sith]]'', where both Luke and Leia are CG and so is the droid midwife.
* Attempted aversion/bizarre example: Judd Apatow wanted to shoot an actual birth for ''KnockedUp''; AnneHathaway is said to have turned down the project because of this. Apatow abandoned this plan when he realized that he would need a worker's permit for the unborn child.
* Taken to its most insane in Rudy Ray Moore's ''Petey Wheatstraw, the Devils' Son-in-Law'', where the titular character emerges from the womb looking about twelve years old and ''wearing a diaper''! He then attacks his doctor.
* ''TheNativityStory'' is odd in the fact that while the baby playing Jesus could maybe pass for newborn, the baby John the Baptist comes out of the womb looking as if it's already attending preschool. The contrast between them makes the problem much worse than if they had used two older babies.
* Total {{aversion}} in the film ''Window Water Baby Moving'' by Stan Brakhage, in which Brakhage actually films his own wife in the few days before giving birth, as well as the filming during the birthing process... from up close. The fact that the film that there is no music or dialogue only highlights the intense (and {{squick}}y nature) of birth. The camera only being a foot away from his wife's... "area" also lends to this feeling.
* In the 1999 movie ''{{Cleopatra}}'', when Cleopatra gives birth to her son, the physician hands him over to her just seconds after he comes out. Not only is he (and the blanket he's bundled in) perfectly clean and pristine looking, but he's also ''considerably'' large to be a newborn - making it obvious that the infant that was used had to have been at least 6-8 months.
* Played very straight in Adrienne Shelly's indie film ''Waitress''.
* Spike Lee's "She Hate Me" averted this in a rather traumatizing fashion. Not one, but two births were actually filmed and used in the movie. Pretty squicky stuff, especially since you expect the standard "mother screaming/cut to clean, swaddled child." Nope. You get two real kids popping out of real mothers right before your very eyes.
* The NostalgiaChick is quick to note how Nicole's baby is "smegmaless" and "Caucasian" after it's born in ''SpiceWorld''.
* In the TV movie ''Million Dollar Babies,'' about the Dionne quintuplets, the producers used anamatronic dolls for the newborn quints. Using older babies to represent the newborn Dionne girls, who were two months premature, and small for that, would have been ridiculous, and defeatist as well, since it's a major portion of the first half-hour of the film that the girls are tiny, premature, and not expected to live. In addition to that, finding five babies who looked alike would be difficult. Obviously, using real, underweight newborns or preemies was out of the question. The film was made before CGI was an option.
[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* Aaron on ''{{Lost}}'' was actually a newborn at birth, but thereafter was played by a series of significantly older babies. Of course, it's difficult to find blond, blue-eyed babies in Hawaii, especially to play a character who only ages two months in three seasons of episodes.
* {{Inversion}}: In a ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' flashback in season one, an eighteen-month-old Claire (an age when children are often walking and might even have a word or two in their vocabularies) was played by an eight-month-old baby.
** Could be justified, if Noah Bennett lied about her age to obscure the fact that Claire was obtained by theft, not private adoption.
* Both used and averted on ''DesperateHousewives'' in season four: Danielle's son was born with amniotic fluid and all and looked like the average newborn for quite a while afterward, but Susan's (month early) son was born perfectly clean and looked to be the average size of a four month old baby.
* ''{{Angel}}'', Connor came out of Darla relatively clean. However, given that she's a vampire, and she staked herself to deliver him, the fluids would've turned to dust and vaporized. Also it was raining. Still, Connor lacked the wrinkled face common to newborns.
** He also lacked a placenta, which is made up primarily of fetal tissue and probably shouldn't have disintegrated with Darla.
* Parodied on ''GeorgeLopez''. Anytime a flashback occurs where George is an infant, it's an infant's body with George's head computer generated on.
* Hera on ''BattlestarGalactica'' is born tiny, bloody, and generally looking slightly premature.
* Averted on StarTrekTheNextGeneration episode "Disaster" when Keiko O'Brien gives birth to Molly with a cut-away shot that looks realistic.
* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual companion book]], a half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian newborn was needed for an episode of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', so they got the guys who built [[Film/ChildsPlay Chucky]] to do it. Sadly (and hilariously), the baby really ''looked'' like a [[NightmareFuel Cardassian/Bajoran Chucky]], so in the end they used a normal doll wrapped in a blanket and had one cutaway scene, using a [[DawsonBabies four-month-old]] with a small rubber prosthetic forehead applied with K-Y Jelly.
* Either TV Land or Nick-at-Nite once ran a commercial that lampshaded the entire TV-birth process, including this trope. It went something like this:
-->'''Kid:''' Where do babies come from?
-->'''Mother:''' Well, when two TV characters love each other very much, generally in the third season, the woman wears a very special pillow on her tummy. For three to five episodes. The [[PanickyExpectantFather man panics]], and the woman is rushed off to hair and makeup, so she can look fresh as a daisy. And voila -- four-month-old newborns!
* Not shown on camera, but a ''LawAndOrder'' about infanticidal teen parents averted the sanitized-birth elements of this trope, citing as evidence the gory mess (blood, amniotic fluid, infant feces) which the birth made of a hotel room.
* ''{{Glee}}'': This was done in the season finale. Quinn gave birth to what looked like a 4 month old.
* Averted in the {{X-Files}} episode "Existence", in which the baby that plays William was Jerry Shiban, the son of John Shiban, one of the producers of the show. He was about two weeks old when he appeared in that episode, though when William returned for the next season, a different baby was cast due to Jerry's difficult temperament. Also the reason why William goes from being a redhead in season 8 to a blonde in season 9.
* Played straight in {{Firefly}} in the episode "Heart of Gold", in which a prostitute gives birth to what looks like a 1-year-old.
* One SaturdayNightLive skit has the newborn baby played by WillFerrell.
* The first-season episode "Brief Candle" of StargateSG1 appears to play this straight, with a newborn obviously larger than this troper's two-month-old child. May be justified, however, due to the RapidAging central to the plot.
* In the fifth season premiere of StargateAtlantis, the baby used to portray Teyla's newborn is about two weeks old. The commentary notes that they were counting down when the actual expectant mother would have her baby since it had to be at least 14 days old before they could use it in the scene.
* Little baby Jake in the SesameStreet spin off, SesameEnglish (which teaches English to foreigners, starting with Taiwanese and Chinese), is portrayed by RogerBart (who was 37 at the time of first airing) of all people.
* On ''{{Roseanne}}'', the child playing Jackie's son Andy appears to be 4-5 months old. However, Roseanne mentions that Jackie is still in the post partnum period where she's not allowed to have sex, which only lasts for six weeks after birth.
[[AC:{{Magazines}}]]
* ''TheOnion'' satirized this with one of its headlines: "Woman on TV gives birth to four month old baby".
[[AC:Stand-Up Comedy]]
* On one of his comedy albums, BillCosby describes how unprepared he was for his newborn's appearance:
-->"...As they started to clean it off... I went over to my wife, kissed her gently on the lips, and said, 'Darling, I love you very much. You just gave birth to a lizard.'"
** Ironically, when he got [[TheCosbyShow his own sitcom]] in the Eighties, he played an obstetrician.
[[AC:Other]]
* Quite common in paintings depicting Jesus's birth. This is an obvious case of [[MostWritersAreMale All Painters Are Male]], though, and at the times most of these works were made even married men didn't spend very much time around small babies. Also, a lot of times the patrons would pay the artist specifically to make the baby Jesus resemble a family member, if not the patron himself.
----
This can have an unfortunate side effect, due to the fact that RealityIsUnrealistic, making a person's first encounter with a real newborn possibly {{squick}}y. Real newborns aren't clean looking gurgling bundles of cuteness. Real newborns are covered in things like blood, amniotic fluid, and other bodily substances, up to and including fecal matter. There is a chance they could be covered in a peach fuzz like substance called lanugo (an evolutionary remnant of when our ancestors were a lot hairier than we are now; most fetuses lose it before birth but obviously, a few don't). Their skin will usually have a red hue to it as well, and look somewhat "wrinkly", especially if they are considerably premature. On top of all this most newborns have noticeably deformed heads from the birth process since their skulls aren't yet closed and their bones are very flexible. To say nothing of the placenta that should be popping out with the babe. Even newborns that have been cleaned up and are a couple days old are generally UglyCute at best. It's been said that all babies look like WinstonChurchill.
In fiction, birth is a much cleaner, nicer ([[ScreamingBirth but still painful for the mother]]) process, and in American films and TV shows usually happens in a tent. The four month old tot pops out of his/her Mommy as clean as whistle and is bundled up.
This is a fairly ubiquitous trope so only aversions, subversions, inversions, parodies and the like should be added.
----
!!Examples
[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* {{Aversion}}: ''{{Children of Men}}'' used a CGI baby in the birth scene.
** Ditto for ''[[StarWars Revenge of the Sith]]'', where both Luke and Leia are CG and so is the droid midwife.
* Attempted aversion/bizarre example: Judd Apatow wanted to shoot an actual birth for ''KnockedUp''; AnneHathaway is said to have turned down the project because of this. Apatow abandoned this plan when he realized that he would need a worker's permit for the unborn child.
* Taken to its most insane in Rudy Ray Moore's ''Petey Wheatstraw, the Devils' Son-in-Law'', where the titular character emerges from the womb looking about twelve years old and ''wearing a diaper''! He then attacks his doctor.
* ''TheNativityStory'' is odd in the fact that while the baby playing Jesus could maybe pass for newborn, the baby John the Baptist comes out of the womb looking as if it's already attending preschool. The contrast between them makes the problem much worse than if they had used two older babies.
* Total {{aversion}} in the film ''Window Water Baby Moving'' by Stan Brakhage, in which Brakhage actually films his own wife in the few days before giving birth, as well as the filming during the birthing process... from up close. The fact that the film that there is no music or dialogue only highlights the intense (and {{squick}}y nature) of birth. The camera only being a foot away from his wife's... "area" also lends to this feeling.
* In the 1999 movie ''{{Cleopatra}}'', when Cleopatra gives birth to her son, the physician hands him over to her just seconds after he comes out. Not only is he (and the blanket he's bundled in) perfectly clean and pristine looking, but he's also ''considerably'' large to be a newborn - making it obvious that the infant that was used had to have been at least 6-8 months.
* Played very straight in Adrienne Shelly's indie film ''Waitress''.
* Spike Lee's "She Hate Me" averted this in a rather traumatizing fashion. Not one, but two births were actually filmed and used in the movie. Pretty squicky stuff, especially since you expect the standard "mother screaming/cut to clean, swaddled child." Nope. You get two real kids popping out of real mothers right before your very eyes.
* The NostalgiaChick is quick to note how Nicole's baby is "smegmaless" and "Caucasian" after it's born in ''SpiceWorld''.
* In the TV movie ''Million Dollar Babies,'' about the Dionne quintuplets, the producers used anamatronic dolls for the newborn quints. Using older babies to represent the newborn Dionne girls, who were two months premature, and small for that, would have been ridiculous, and defeatist as well, since it's a major portion of the first half-hour of the film that the girls are tiny, premature, and not expected to live. In addition to that, finding five babies who looked alike would be difficult. Obviously, using real, underweight newborns or preemies was out of the question. The film was made before CGI was an option.
[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* Aaron on ''{{Lost}}'' was actually a newborn at birth, but thereafter was played by a series of significantly older babies. Of course, it's difficult to find blond, blue-eyed babies in Hawaii, especially to play a character who only ages two months in three seasons of episodes.
* {{Inversion}}: In a ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' flashback in season one, an eighteen-month-old Claire (an age when children are often walking and might even have a word or two in their vocabularies) was played by an eight-month-old baby.
** Could be justified, if Noah Bennett lied about her age to obscure the fact that Claire was obtained by theft, not private adoption.
* Both used and averted on ''DesperateHousewives'' in season four: Danielle's son was born with amniotic fluid and all and looked like the average newborn for quite a while afterward, but Susan's (month early) son was born perfectly clean and looked to be the average size of a four month old baby.
* ''{{Angel}}'', Connor came out of Darla relatively clean. However, given that she's a vampire, and she staked herself to deliver him, the fluids would've turned to dust and vaporized. Also it was raining. Still, Connor lacked the wrinkled face common to newborns.
** He also lacked a placenta, which is made up primarily of fetal tissue and probably shouldn't have disintegrated with Darla.
* Parodied on ''GeorgeLopez''. Anytime a flashback occurs where George is an infant, it's an infant's body with George's head computer generated on.
* Hera on ''BattlestarGalactica'' is born tiny, bloody, and generally looking slightly premature.
* Averted on StarTrekTheNextGeneration episode "Disaster" when Keiko O'Brien gives birth to Molly with a cut-away shot that looks realistic.
* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual companion book]], a half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian newborn was needed for an episode of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', so they got the guys who built [[Film/ChildsPlay Chucky]] to do it. Sadly (and hilariously), the baby really ''looked'' like a [[NightmareFuel Cardassian/Bajoran Chucky]], so in the end they used a normal doll wrapped in a blanket and had one cutaway scene, using a [[DawsonBabies four-month-old]] with a small rubber prosthetic forehead applied with K-Y Jelly.
* Either TV Land or Nick-at-Nite once ran a commercial that lampshaded the entire TV-birth process, including this trope. It went something like this:
-->'''Kid:''' Where do babies come from?
-->'''Mother:''' Well, when two TV characters love each other very much, generally in the third season, the woman wears a very special pillow on her tummy. For three to five episodes. The [[PanickyExpectantFather man panics]], and the woman is rushed off to hair and makeup, so she can look fresh as a daisy. And voila -- four-month-old newborns!
* Not shown on camera, but a ''LawAndOrder'' about infanticidal teen parents averted the sanitized-birth elements of this trope, citing as evidence the gory mess (blood, amniotic fluid, infant feces) which the birth made of a hotel room.
* ''{{Glee}}'': This was done in the season finale. Quinn gave birth to what looked like a 4 month old.
* Averted in the {{X-Files}} episode "Existence", in which the baby that plays William was Jerry Shiban, the son of John Shiban, one of the producers of the show. He was about two weeks old when he appeared in that episode, though when William returned for the next season, a different baby was cast due to Jerry's difficult temperament. Also the reason why William goes from being a redhead in season 8 to a blonde in season 9.
* Played straight in {{Firefly}} in the episode "Heart of Gold", in which a prostitute gives birth to what looks like a 1-year-old.
* One SaturdayNightLive skit has the newborn baby played by WillFerrell.
* The first-season episode "Brief Candle" of StargateSG1 appears to play this straight, with a newborn obviously larger than this troper's two-month-old child. May be justified, however, due to the RapidAging central to the plot.
* In the fifth season premiere of StargateAtlantis, the baby used to portray Teyla's newborn is about two weeks old. The commentary notes that they were counting down when the actual expectant mother would have her baby since it had to be at least 14 days old before they could use it in the scene.
* Little baby Jake in the SesameStreet spin off, SesameEnglish (which teaches English to foreigners, starting with Taiwanese and Chinese), is portrayed by RogerBart (who was 37 at the time of first airing) of all people.
* On ''{{Roseanne}}'', the child playing Jackie's son Andy appears to be 4-5 months old. However, Roseanne mentions that Jackie is still in the post partnum period where she's not allowed to have sex, which only lasts for six weeks after birth.
[[AC:{{Magazines}}]]
* ''TheOnion'' satirized this with one of its headlines: "Woman on TV gives birth to four month old baby".
[[AC:Stand-Up Comedy]]
* On one of his comedy albums, BillCosby describes how unprepared he was for his newborn's appearance:
-->"...As they started to clean it off... I went over to my wife, kissed her gently on the lips, and said, 'Darling, I love you very much. You just gave birth to a lizard.'"
** Ironically, when he got [[TheCosbyShow his own sitcom]] in the Eighties, he played an obstetrician.
[[AC:Other]]
* Quite common in paintings depicting Jesus's birth. This is an obvious case of [[MostWritersAreMale All Painters Are Male]], though, and at the times most of these works were made even married men didn't spend very much time around small babies. Also, a lot of times the patrons would pay the artist specifically to make the baby Jesus resemble a family member, if not the patron himself.
----
to:
This can have an unfortunate side effect, due to the fact that RealityIsUnrealistic, making a person's first encounter with a real newborn possibly {{squick}}y. Real newborns aren't clean looking gurgling bundles of cuteness. Real newborns are covered in things like blood, amniotic fluid, and other bodily substances, up to and including fecal matter. There is a chance they could be covered in a peach fuzz like substance called lanugo (an evolutionary remnant of when our ancestors were a lot hairier than we are now; most fetuses lose it before birth but obviously, a few don't). Their skin will usually have a red hue to it as well, and look somewhat "wrinkly", especially if they are considerably premature. On top of all this most newborns have noticeably deformed heads from the birth process since their skulls aren't yet closed and their bones are very flexible. To say nothing of the placenta that should be popping out with the babe. Even newborns that have been cleaned up and are a couple days old are generally UglyCute at best. It's been said that all babies look like WinstonChurchill.
In fiction, birth is a much cleaner, nicer ([[ScreamingBirth but still painful for the mother]]) process, and in American films and TV shows usually happens in a tent. The four month old tot pops out of his/her Mommy as clean as whistle and is bundled up.
This is a fairly ubiquitous trope so only aversions, subversions, inversions, parodies and the like should be added.
----
!!Examples
[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* {{Aversion}}: ''{{Children of Men}}'' used a CGI baby in the birth scene.
** Ditto for ''[[StarWars Revenge of the Sith]]'', where both Luke and Leia are CG and so is the droid midwife.
* Attempted aversion/bizarre example: Judd Apatow wanted to shoot an actual birth for ''KnockedUp''; AnneHathaway is said to have turned down the project because of this. Apatow abandoned this plan when he realized that he would need a worker's permit for the unborn child.
* Taken to its most insane in Rudy Ray Moore's ''Petey Wheatstraw, the Devils' Son-in-Law'', where the titular character emerges from the womb looking about twelve years old and ''wearing a diaper''! He then attacks his doctor.
* ''TheNativityStory'' is odd in the fact that while the baby playing Jesus could maybe pass for newborn, the baby John the Baptist comes out of the womb looking as if it's already attending preschool. The contrast between them makes the problem much worse than if they had used two older babies.
* Total {{aversion}} in the film ''Window Water Baby Moving'' by Stan Brakhage, in which Brakhage actually films his own wife in the few days before giving birth, as well as the filming during the birthing process... from up close. The fact that the film that there is no music or dialogue only highlights the intense (and {{squick}}y nature) of birth. The camera only being a foot away from his wife's... "area" also lends to this feeling.
* In the 1999 movie ''{{Cleopatra}}'', when Cleopatra gives birth to her son, the physician hands him over to her just seconds after he comes out. Not only is he (and the blanket he's bundled in) perfectly clean and pristine looking, but he's also ''considerably'' large to be a newborn - making it obvious that the infant that was used had to have been at least 6-8 months.
* Played very straight in Adrienne Shelly's indie film ''Waitress''.
* Spike Lee's "She Hate Me" averted this in a rather traumatizing fashion. Not one, but two births were actually filmed and used in the movie. Pretty squicky stuff, especially since you expect the standard "mother screaming/cut to clean, swaddled child." Nope. You get two real kids popping out of real mothers right before your very eyes.
* The NostalgiaChick is quick to note how Nicole's baby is "smegmaless" and "Caucasian" after it's born in ''SpiceWorld''.
* In the TV movie ''Million Dollar Babies,'' about the Dionne quintuplets, the producers used anamatronic dolls for the newborn quints. Using older babies to represent the newborn Dionne girls, who were two months premature, and small for that, would have been ridiculous, and defeatist as well, since it's a major portion of the first half-hour of the film that the girls are tiny, premature, and not expected to live. In addition to that, finding five babies who looked alike would be difficult. Obviously, using real, underweight newborns or preemies was out of the question. The film was made before CGI was an option.
[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* Aaron on ''{{Lost}}'' was actually a newborn at birth, but thereafter was played by a series of significantly older babies. Of course, it's difficult to find blond, blue-eyed babies in Hawaii, especially to play a character who only ages two months in three seasons of episodes.
* {{Inversion}}: In a ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' flashback in season one, an eighteen-month-old Claire (an age when children are often walking and might even have a word or two in their vocabularies) was played by an eight-month-old baby.
** Could be justified, if Noah Bennett lied about her age to obscure the fact that Claire was obtained by theft, not private adoption.
* Both used and averted on ''DesperateHousewives'' in season four: Danielle's son was born with amniotic fluid and all and looked like the average newborn for quite a while afterward, but Susan's (month early) son was born perfectly clean and looked to be the average size of a four month old baby.
* ''{{Angel}}'', Connor came out of Darla relatively clean. However, given that she's a vampire, and she staked herself to deliver him, the fluids would've turned to dust and vaporized. Also it was raining. Still, Connor lacked the wrinkled face common to newborns.
** He also lacked a placenta, which is made up primarily of fetal tissue and probably shouldn't have disintegrated with Darla.
* Parodied on ''GeorgeLopez''. Anytime a flashback occurs where George is an infant, it's an infant's body with George's head computer generated on.
* Hera on ''BattlestarGalactica'' is born tiny, bloody, and generally looking slightly premature.
* Averted on StarTrekTheNextGeneration episode "Disaster" when Keiko O'Brien gives birth to Molly with a cut-away shot that looks realistic.
* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual companion book]], a half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian newborn was needed for an episode of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', so they got the guys who built [[Film/ChildsPlay Chucky]] to do it. Sadly (and hilariously), the baby really ''looked'' like a [[NightmareFuel Cardassian/Bajoran Chucky]], so in the end they used a normal doll wrapped in a blanket and had one cutaway scene, using a [[DawsonBabies four-month-old]] with a small rubber prosthetic forehead applied with K-Y Jelly.
* Either TV Land or Nick-at-Nite once ran a commercial that lampshaded the entire TV-birth process, including this trope. It went something like this:
-->'''Kid:''' Where do babies come from?
-->'''Mother:''' Well, when two TV characters love each other very much, generally in the third season, the woman wears a very special pillow on her tummy. For three to five episodes. The [[PanickyExpectantFather man panics]], and the woman is rushed off to hair and makeup, so she can look fresh as a daisy. And voila -- four-month-old newborns!
* Not shown on camera, but a ''LawAndOrder'' about infanticidal teen parents averted the sanitized-birth elements of this trope, citing as evidence the gory mess (blood, amniotic fluid, infant feces) which the birth made of a hotel room.
* ''{{Glee}}'': This was done in the season finale. Quinn gave birth to what looked like a 4 month old.
* Averted in the {{X-Files}} episode "Existence", in which the baby that plays William was Jerry Shiban, the son of John Shiban, one of the producers of the show. He was about two weeks old when he appeared in that episode, though when William returned for the next season, a different baby was cast due to Jerry's difficult temperament. Also the reason why William goes from being a redhead in season 8 to a blonde in season 9.
* Played straight in {{Firefly}} in the episode "Heart of Gold", in which a prostitute gives birth to what looks like a 1-year-old.
* One SaturdayNightLive skit has the newborn baby played by WillFerrell.
* The first-season episode "Brief Candle" of StargateSG1 appears to play this straight, with a newborn obviously larger than this troper's two-month-old child. May be justified, however, due to the RapidAging central to the plot.
* In the fifth season premiere of StargateAtlantis, the baby used to portray Teyla's newborn is about two weeks old. The commentary notes that they were counting down when the actual expectant mother would have her baby since it had to be at least 14 days old before they could use it in the scene.
* Little baby Jake in the SesameStreet spin off, SesameEnglish (which teaches English to foreigners, starting with Taiwanese and Chinese), is portrayed by RogerBart (who was 37 at the time of first airing) of all people.
* On ''{{Roseanne}}'', the child playing Jackie's son Andy appears to be 4-5 months old. However, Roseanne mentions that Jackie is still in the post partnum period where she's not allowed to have sex, which only lasts for six weeks after birth.
[[AC:{{Magazines}}]]
* ''TheOnion'' satirized this with one of its headlines: "Woman on TV gives birth to four month old baby".
[[AC:Stand-Up Comedy]]
* On one of his comedy albums, BillCosby describes how unprepared he was for his newborn's appearance:
-->"...As they started to clean it off... I went over to my wife, kissed her gently on the lips, and said, 'Darling, I love you very much. You just gave birth to a lizard.'"
** Ironically, when he got [[TheCosbyShow his own sitcom]] in the Eighties, he played an obstetrician.
[[AC:Other]]
* Quite common in paintings depicting Jesus's birth. This is an obvious case of [[MostWritersAreMale All Painters Are Male]], though, and at the times most of these works were made even married men didn't spend very much time around small babies. Also, a lot of times the patrons would pay the artist specifically to make the baby Jesus resemble a family member, if not the patron himself.
----
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
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Changed line(s) 22 (click to see context) from:
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* In the TV movie ''Million Dollar Babies,'' about the Dionne quintuplets, the producers used anamatronic dolls for the newborn quints. Using older babies to represent the newborn Dionne girls, who were two months premature, and small for that, would have been ridiculous, and defeatist as well, since it's a major portion of the first half-hour of the film that the girls are tiny, premature, and not expected to live. In addition to that, finding five babies who looked alike would be difficult. Obviously, using real, underweight newborns or preemies was out of the question. The film was made before CGI was an option.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
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This can have an unfortunate side effect, due to the fact that RealityIsUnrealistic, making a person's first encounter with a real newborn possibly {{squick}}y. Real newborns aren't clean looking gurgling bundles of cuteness. Real newborns are covered in things like blood, amniotic fluid, and other bodily substances, up to and including fecal matter. There is a chance they could be covered in a peach fuzz like substances called lanugo (an evolutionary remnant of when our ancestors were a lot hairier than we are now; most fetuses lose it before birth but obviously, a few don't). Their skin will usually have a red hue to it as well, and look somewhat "wrinkly", especially if they are considerably premature. On top of all this most newborns have noticeably deformed heads from the birth process since their skulls aren't yet closed and their bones are very flexible. To say nothing of the placenta that should be popping out with the babe. Even newborns that have been cleaned up and are a couple days old are generally UglyCute at best. It's been said that all babies look like WinstonChurchill.
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This can have an unfortunate side effect, due to the fact that RealityIsUnrealistic, making a person's first encounter with a real newborn possibly {{squick}}y. Real newborns aren't clean looking gurgling bundles of cuteness. Real newborns are covered in things like blood, amniotic fluid, and other bodily substances, up to and including fecal matter. There is a chance they could be covered in a peach fuzz like substances substance called lanugo (an evolutionary remnant of when our ancestors were a lot hairier than we are now; most fetuses lose it before birth but obviously, a few don't). Their skin will usually have a red hue to it as well, and look somewhat "wrinkly", especially if they are considerably premature. On top of all this most newborns have noticeably deformed heads from the birth process since their skulls aren't yet closed and their bones are very flexible. To say nothing of the placenta that should be popping out with the babe. Even newborns that have been cleaned up and are a couple days old are generally UglyCute at best. It's been said that all babies look like WinstonChurchill.
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* Both used and averted on ''DesperateHousewives'' in season four: Danielle's son was born with amniotic fluid and all and looked like the average newborn for quite a while afterwards, but Susan's (month early) son was born perfectly clean and looked to be the average size of a four month old baby.
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* Both used and averted on ''DesperateHousewives'' in season four: Danielle's son was born with amniotic fluid and all and looked like the average newborn for quite a while afterwards, afterward, but Susan's (month early) son was born perfectly clean and looked to be the average size of a four month old baby.
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* Little baby Jake in the SesameStreet spinoff, SesameEnglish (which teaches English to foreigners, starting with Taiwanese and Chinese), is portrayed by RogerBart (who was 37 at the time of first airing) of all people.
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* Little baby Jake in the SesameStreet spinoff, spin off, SesameEnglish (which teaches English to foreigners, starting with Taiwanese and Chinese), is portrayed by RogerBart (who was 37 at the time of first airing) of all people.
* On ''{{Roseanne}}'', the child playing Jackie's son Andy appears to be 4-5 months old. However, Roseanne mentions that Jackie is still in the post partnum period where she's not allowed to have sex, which only lasts for six weeks after birth.
* On ''{{Roseanne}}'', the child playing Jackie's son Andy appears to be 4-5 months old. However, Roseanne mentions that Jackie is still in the post partnum period where she's not allowed to have sex, which only lasts for six weeks after birth.
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** One SaturdayNightLive skit has the newborn baby played by WillFerrell.
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** Ditto for ''[[StarWars Revenge of the Sith]]'', where both Luke and Leia are CG and so is the droid midwife.
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* A particularly [[TVTropesWikiDrinkingGame egregious]] example: in the 1999 movie ''{{Cleopatra}}'', when the titular character gives birth to her son, the physician hands him over to her just seconds after he comes out. Not only is he (and the blanket he's bundled in) perfectly clean and pristine looking, but he's also ''considerably'' large to be a newborn - making it obvious that the infant that was used had to have been at least 6-8 months.
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* A particularly [[TVTropesWikiDrinkingGame egregious]] example: in In the 1999 movie ''{{Cleopatra}}'', when the titular character Cleopatra gives birth to her son, the physician hands him over to her just seconds after he comes out. Not only is he (and the blanket he's bundled in) perfectly clean and pristine looking, but he's also ''considerably'' large to be a newborn - making it obvious that the infant that was used had to have been at least 6-8 months.
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Birthing tent.
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In fiction, birth is a much cleaner, nicer ([[ScreamingBirth but still painful for the mother]]) process. The four month old tot pops out of his/her Mommy as clean as whistle and is bundled up.
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In fiction, birth is a much cleaner, nicer ([[ScreamingBirth but still painful for the mother]]) process.process, and in American films and TV shows usually happens in a tent. The four month old tot pops out of his/her Mommy as clean as whistle and is bundled up.
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* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual companion book]], a half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian baby was needed for an episode of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', so they got the guys who built [[Film/ChildsPlay Chucky]] to do it. Sadly (and hilariously), the baby really ''looked'' like a [[NightmareFuel Cardassian/Bajoran Chucky]], so in the end they used a normal doll wrapped in a blanket and had one cutaway scene, using a four-month-old with a small rubber prosthetic forehead applied with K-Y Jelly.
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* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual companion book]], a half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian baby newborn was needed for an episode of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', so they got the guys who built [[Film/ChildsPlay Chucky]] to do it. Sadly (and hilariously), the baby really ''looked'' like a [[NightmareFuel Cardassian/Bajoran Chucky]], so in the end they used a normal doll wrapped in a blanket and had one cutaway scene, using a four-month-old [[DawsonBabies four-month-old]] with a small rubber prosthetic forehead applied with K-Y Jelly.
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* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual companion book]], a half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian baby was needed for an episode of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', so they got the guys who built [[Film/ChildsPlay Chucky]] to do it. Sadly (and hilariously), the baby really ''looked'' like a [[NightmareFuel Cardassian/Bajoran Chucky]], so in the end they used a normal doll wrapped in a blanket and had one cutaway scene, using a four-month-old with a small rubber prosthetic forehead applied with K-Y Jelly.
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** According to the DVD special features, virtually everything in that scene is CGI. It's almost parody.
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* The first-season episode "Brief Candle" of StargateSG1 appears to play this straight, with a newborn obviously larger than this troper's two-month-old child. May be justified, however, due to the RapidAging central to the plot.
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* The NostalgiaChick is quick to note how Nicole's baby is "smegmaless" and "Caucasian" after it's born in ''SpiceWorld''.
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* Averted in the {{X-Files}} episode "Existence", in which the baby that plays William was Jerry Shiban, the son of John Shiban, one of the producers of the show. He was about two weeks old when he appeared in that episode, though when William returned for the next season, a different baby was cast due to Jerry's difficult temperment. Also the reason why William goes from being a redhead in season 8 to a blonde in season 9.
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* Averted in the {{X-Files}} episode "Existence", in which the baby that plays William was Jerry Shiban, the son of John Shiban, one of the producers of the show. He was about two weeks old when he appeared in that episode, though when William returned for the next season, a different baby was cast due to Jerry's difficult temperment.temperament. Also the reason why William goes from being a redhead in season 8 to a blonde in season 9.
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* Quite common in paintings depicting Jesus's birth. This is an obvious case of [[MostWritersAreMale All Painters Are Male]], though, and at the times most of these works were made even married men didn't spend very much time around small babies, SoYeah.
** Also, a lot of times the patrons would pay the artist specifically to make the baby Jesus resemble a family member, if not the patron himself.
*** Also, he's supposedly the son of ''{{God}}'', remember? Who's to say that he ''didn't'' already look beautiful at the time of his birth?
*** For poor Mary's sake, let's hope God ''did'' avert the trope in this case.
** Also, a lot of times the patrons would pay the artist specifically to make the baby Jesus resemble a family member, if not the patron himself.
*** Also, he's supposedly the son of ''{{God}}'', remember? Who's to say that he ''didn't'' already look beautiful at the time of his birth?
*** For poor Mary's sake, let's hope God ''did'' avert the trope in this case.
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* Quite common in paintings depicting Jesus's birth. This is an obvious case of [[MostWritersAreMale All Painters Are Male]], though, and at the times most of these works were made even married men didn't spend very much time around small babies, SoYeah.
**babies. Also, a lot of times the patrons would pay the artist specifically to make the baby Jesus resemble a family member, if not the patron himself.
*** Also, he's supposedly the son of ''{{God}}'', remember? Who's to say that he ''didn't'' already look beautiful at the time of his birth?
*** For poor Mary's sake, let's hope God ''did'' avert the trope in this case.himself.
**
*** Also, he's supposedly the son of ''{{God}}'', remember? Who's to say that he ''didn't'' already look beautiful at the time of his birth?
*** For poor Mary's sake, let's hope God ''did'' avert the trope in this case.
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*** For poor Mary's sake, let's hope God ''did'' avert the trope in this case.
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** He also lacked a placenta, which is made up primarily of fetal tissue and probably shouldn't have disintegrated with Darla.
