History Main / HideYourPregnancy

** Towards the end of the second season, Mazikeen swaps her MsFanservice wardrobe for looser shirts due to Creator/LesleyAnnBrandt's pregnancy. She's also [[AbsenteeActor absent]] for several episodes at the start of season 3 due to them being filmed while Brandt was giving birth. To make things even more complicated, four episodes were shot at the end of the second season and then aired OutOfOrder throughout the third season resulting in some back and forth over how much she's hidden.

* Filipino actress Sharon Cuneta was pregnant with her daughter KC Concepcion when she was filming ''Bituwing Walang Ningning'' (lit. 'Star Without a Sparkle'). It became apparent that Sharon's baby bump was starting to grow, and as such, the film crew had to either film her from the chest up or use various objects such as bookshelves and lampshades.

** In ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince'', Creator/HelenaBonhamCarter filmed her earliest scene as Bellatrix Lestrange while pregnant, the one where she and her sister visit Snape. Even though she's wearing a black flowy dress, her belly was very poorly hidden in the handful of shots where she's in focus. She spends most of the scene in the background or standing behind someone or something.

* Blunt was also pregnant for re-shoots on ''Film/EdgeOfTomorrow''. She wasn't far along so they didn't have to do much to hide it, but she couldn't do as many stunts or wear the heavy armor for too long.
* Emily Blunt was pregnant yet again playing an infertile woman in ''Literature/TheGirlOnTheTrain'', though she was only five months gone by the end of filming. As she plays an alcoholic, it wasn't too noticeable. She does, however, spend a lot of the film wearing baggy clothes and big coats.

* Creator/LindaHarrison was pregnant and was starting to show around the end of production for ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'', so Nova was carefully posed to hide it.
* Scarlett Johansson parodies this in ''Film/HailCaesar'', where she plays an actress who's trying to conceal her illegitimate pregnancy. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtALqoM5hkY Her costumes keep getting altered and she can't perform her stunts for too long.]] This is undoubtedly poking fun at her own performance in ''Age of Ultron''.

* Creator/GalGadot was pregnant during the reshoots of ''[[Film/WonderWoman2017 Wonder Woman]]''. In order to hide it, they replaced part of her costume with green material so that they could digitally edit it afterward.

* ''Series/WandaVision'': Parodied in "[[Recap/WandaVisionEpisode3NowInColor Now in Color]]", where Wanda goes through the usual Hollywood bag of tricks to hide her telltale belly, including long, loose-fitting clothes and unseasonable coats.
-->'''Monica Rambeau:''' ''[when Wanda answers the door wearing a trenchcoat]'' It's 75 degrees out. Are you making a fashion statement?
** Thanks to a case of sitcom-brain, Monica never catches on. Things then go further into the absurd when Wanda resorts to using comically under-sized household props.
--->'''Monica:''' Would you look at that?\\
'''Wanda:''' ''[holding a fruit bowl in front of her belly bump]'' What?\\
'''Monica:''' [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Fruit!]]

* Parodied on ''Series/ThirtyRock''. In-universe, Avery is trying to hide her pregnancy from her superiors. Cue her carrying around ridiculously oversized objects, and coaxing a friend into making "wizard robes" fashionable.
** This may have been lampshade hanging for Creator/TinaFey's own pregnancy which was becoming visible at that time.

* In ''Film/LegallyBlonde 2'', they filmed an introductory scene sometime after the main shooting was completed. At that point Creator/ReeseWitherspoon was obviously pregnant, so the scene consists of women sitting and talking, shot only from the chest up. It's pretty awkward and obvious.

** ''Film/FantasticBeastsTheSecretsOfDumbledore'' had to deal with three pregnant cast members. Claudia Kim, who plays Nagini, was simply written out of the movie since she was very far along when production started after an extensive delay caused by the pandemic. Creator/AlisonSudol, who plays Queenie Goldstein, and Victoria Yeates, who plays Bunty, were both pregnant for the entirety of production. The tricks used to hide their bellies included the standards ones like shooting them from the chest up and behind, wearing dark flowy clothes and large coats, and having them sit down.

* In the film adaptation of ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince'', Creator/HelenaBonhamCarter filmed her earliest scene as Bellatrix Lestrange while pregnant, where her bump was very poorly hidden by a huge leather belt. It's especially noticeable in the scene where she and her sister Narcissa visit Snape. Bellatrix is in the background for most of the scene and when she does come into the foreground she is standing behind someone or something.
* Bonham-Carter was also pregnant during the filming of ''Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'', resulting in magical size-changing breasts over the course of the movie.

* Scarlett Johansson parodies this in ''Film/HailCaesar'', where she plays an actress who's trying to conceal her illegitimate pregnancy. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtALqoM5hkY Her costumes keep getting altered and she can't perform her stunts for too long]]. This is undoubtedly poking fun at her own performance in ''Age of Ultron''.

* Creator/KristenBell gave birth to her first child about six weeks before filming started on the then-concluding movie for ''Film/VeronicaMars'', and she's still visibly not back to her usual extremely slender body type. Since the movie is set nine years after the end of the show, the unspoken consensus seems (pleasingly) to be that, hey, some people aren't as skinny in their late twenties as they were in their late teens, and since she still looks gorgeous that's all her various admirers care about. It does get a brief moment of LampshadeHanging, though, when Dick's reaction to seeing Veronica for the first time in nearly a decade is to question whether she's had a boob job.

* A rare in-universe example is featured in ''Literature/ExtremelyLoudAndIncrediblyClose.'' [[spoiler:One of the "rules" that Oskar's grandparents made was to never have children, but his grandmother felt she was losing him, so she made a pregnancy happen anyway and hid it with baggy clothing and pillows. Still didn't stop him from leaving.]]

** When Creator/LexaDoig became pregnant, minor character Dr. Lam disappeared from the show without reference (and was the second ''Stargate'' actress Michael Shanks got pregnant, although the first (Vaitiare Bandera, who played Sha're) was a WrittenInInfirmity.

* Likewise, Creator/RoxanneDawson (Lt. Torres) of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. The writers considered writing her pregnancy into the plot, but decided against it, resulting in a long period in which her character was never shown from the chest down ''and'' wearing a [[WrenchWench smock holding engineering tools]] (except for the two-part episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E17TheKillingGame The Killing Game]]" set in the holodeck where the character was forced by aliens who had taken over the ship into portraying a pregnant woman). Amusingly enough, her character later became pregnant. Also due to her pregnancy, there was only one Torres-focused episode in the whole season.

* Creator/LynnRedgrave was pregnant during one season of her show ''House Calls'' (in the late '70s/early '80s) and costume designers had to come up with costumes that were busy on top and dark on the bottom and they had her hold or stand behind objects that obscure her belly due to the fact her character was single, Redgrave wrote that the writers missed out on being innovative.

* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' averted this when Kaitlin Olsen became pregnant. It was written into the series with an entire episode devoted to the Gang trying to find out the identity of the father, they never find out but Dee knows and she's not telling. [[spoiler: Turns out she was carrying the baby for a post-op transgender woman]].

* Creator/LucilleBall was six months pregnant with Lucie Arnaz when she shot the pilot for ''Series/ILoveLucy'', resulting in vastly oversized costumes. As the pilot was not created for television broadcast, the issue hardly mattered.

** Amusingly, another character, Maggie (played by the not-really-pregnant Creator/LaurenCohen) was meant to be pregnant during the time period that Masterson was ''actually'' pregnant - resulting in a situation where the supposedly pregnant woman got up to a lot more strenuous action than one of her not-pregnant counterparts. Could be fairly reasonably justified by Tara still recovering from her injuries, however.

When an actress gets pregnant, this not-usually-planned-for event is usually [[WrittenInInfirmity written into the show as the character getting pregnant]]. However, sometimes, the writers decide not to include the pregnancy, perhaps because there's just no way in hell it can be written in convincingly, it doesn't fit with the storyline, it doesn't fit with the character, or perhaps it's just that StatusQuoIsGod. In this case, the camera crews commonly resort to various tricks to avoid the actress' bump being noticed, such as:

-->'''Monica:''' Would you look at that?
-->'''Wanda:''' ''[holding a fruit bowl in front of her belly bump]'' What?
-->'''Monica:''' [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Fruit!]]

* At the American Music Awards in 1991, Creator/NancyCartwright came out as a costumed [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Bart Simpson]] to present an award, this being during the height of "Bartmania". She was pregnant during her first trimester, but the costume was baggy enough to hide her belly. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTlJ4VbExt4]]

* This is why Zoe, in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' 20th anniversary special "[[Recap/DoctorWho20thASTheFiveDoctors The Five Doctors]]", specifically a vision of her that's tricking the Doctor, is wearing a layer of bubble wrap over her clothes.

* Kelly Rutherford was pregnant during the second season of ''Series/GossipGirl''. At first, they succeeded pretty well in hiding it, but towards the end, they got really sloppy.

* Lynn Redgrave was pregnant during one season of her show ''House Calls'' (in the late '70s/early '80s) and costume designers had to come up with costumes that were busy on top and dark on the bottom and they had her hold or stand behind objects that obscure her belly due to the fact her character was single, Redgrave wrote that the writers missed out on being innovative.

* Kathryn Erbe got a variation of this in ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent''. Much like the example below with Creator/NanaVisitor in Star Trek (which predated the Criminal Intent example by several years), Erbe's character served as a surrogate mother for her sister, since the character was not involved with anyone on the show.

* ''Series/Lucifer2016:'' Towards the end of the second season, Mazikeen swaps her MsFanservice wardrobe for looser shirts due to Creator/LesleyAnnBrandt's pregnancy. She's also [[AbsenteeActor absent]] for several episodes at the start of season 3 due to them being filmed while Brandt was giving birth. To make things even more complicated, four episodes were shot at the end of the second season and then aired OutOfOrder throughout the third season resulting in some back and forth over how much she's hidden.

* On ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' Kinga’s wardrobe in season 11 was supposed to be more varied. Felicia Day’s pregnancy necessitated that she be in an overcoat all season instead.

** Creator/Jenna Fischer was pregnant with her first child during production of season seven while Kinsey was not but both characters were pregnant.

** [=McFadden=] learned she was pregnant shortly after filming one of Crusher's best episodes, "Remember Me," and doing [[PregnantBadass her own (strenuous) stunts]].
** To complicate matters further, one of the most intensively Crusher-centered episodes of the series, "The Host", was made while her pregnancy was quite advanced. While it may seem relatively simple, since this episode involves a romance with a lot of on-screen physical contact, it's actually quite challenging to do while not showing her pregnancy. The writer, interviewed later, said it made the episode even ''better,'' saying that there is a "glow" to women in love and certainly a "glow" on pregnant women.
* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': The character Keiko O'Brien was already pregnant when Kira's actress, Creator/NanaVisitor, became pregnant. As Keiko's actress was not pregnant, a [[WrittenInInfirmity technobabble solution]] was found, requiring Nana Visitor to hide her pregnancy until the relevant episode occurred: a runabout carrying Keiko, Kira and Bashir was involved in a major incident that left Keiko so badly injured the only way to save the unborn baby was to adapt the transporters on the fly to move the baby to the only other available womb. Due to peculiarities of Bajoran physiology, the baby couldn't be transferred back once Keiko had recovered, resulting in Kira moving into the O'Brien's quarters for the remainder of the pregnancy so that the parents could still feel involved with their child's pregnancy. When the [[WrittenInInfirmity pregnancy symptoms]] get too much for Kira, she has an argument with Bashir about how this is his fault. While she's referring to his decision to transfer the baby, it's a show in-joke as Bashir's actor, Alexander Siddig, was the father of Nana Visitor's baby.
* Likewise, Roxanne Dawson (Lt. Torres) of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. The writers considered writing her pregnancy into the plot, but decided against it, resulting in a long period in which her character was never shown from the chest down ''and'' wearing a [[WrenchWench smock holding engineering tools]] (except for the two-part episode "The Killing Game" set in the holodeck where the character was forced by aliens who had taken over the ship into portraying a pregnant woman). Amusingly enough, her character later became pregnant. Also due to her pregnancy, there was only one Torres-focused episode in the whole season.

-->'''Monica Rambeau:''' ''[when Wanda answers the door wearing a trenchcoat]'' It's 75 degrees out. Are you making a fashion

statement?

* ''Series/WandaVision'': Parodied in "[[Recap/WandaVisionEpisode3NowInColor Now in Color]]", where Wanda goes through the usual Hollywood bag of tricks to hide her telltale belly, including long, loose-fitting clothes and unseasonable coats. Thanks to a case of sitcom-brain, "Geraldine" / Monica Rambeau never catches on. It goes further into the absurd when Wanda resorts to using comically under-sized household props, and eventually has to give up the ruse entirely upon going into labor.
-->'''Monica:''' ''[when Wanda answers the door wearing a trenchcoat]'' It's 75 degrees out. Are you making a fashion statement?

[[caption-width-right:270:Traylor Howard using all the tricks of the trade.]]

* In the film adaptation of ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince'', Creator/HelenaBonhamCarter filmed her earliest scene as Bellatrix Lestrange while pregnant, where her bump was very poorly hidden by a huge leather belt. It was so blatant that after watching the movie, you probably left the theater asking yourself, "Does Voldemort really have [[Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical mad game with the bitches]]?" [[spoiler:[[HilariousInHindsight Hilariously enough]], yes he does--at least according to ''Theatre/HarryPotterAndTheCursedChild,'' which says she had his child around this time.]]

** She was also pregnant during the ''Film/JusticeLeague2017'' reshoots, which were ''extensive''. Reportedly, lingering out of frame during each reshot scene is an assistant specifically tasked with holding a puke bucket for her.

** Creator/MelissaFumero announced her pregnancy with her first child a few weeks into the airing of Season 3. Since her character, Amy, had entered into a romantic relationship with the main character just a few episodes before, the writers apparently decided that it wasn't a good time to write her pregnancy into the plot. Fortunately, the fact that it's a sitcom allows for a decent amount of LampshadeHanging (Jake trying to get suggestions for a gift for their six-month anniversary and reacting with disgust to his Charles' suggestion that it's time he "put a baby in her!", for example), and Amy's fairly neutral wardrobe has always consisted of loose blouses and suit jackets anyway, meaning that a lot of the time the actress' baby bump is covered up quite effectively. Impressively it's also yet to impact on her ActionGirl status, with her doing some pretty physical perp chases, [[ItMakesSenseInContext interpretive dance moves]], and briefly fighting Terry in a training session, all of which have been performed without recourse to a FakeShemp.

** When Fumero got pregnant again in Season 7, the writers lampshaded this in "[[Recap/BrooklynNineNineS7E10AdmiralPeralta Admiral Peralta]]", by making Amy pregnant InUniverse and having her hide her baby bump with a manila folder, a box, and a hazmat suit.