History Main / HideYourPregnancy

** When Fumero got pregnant again in Season 7, the writers lampshaded this in "[[Recap/BrooklynNineNineS7E10AdmiralPeralta Admiral Peralta]]". Amy actually ''is'' pregnant InUniverse, but everyone already knows before Jake and Amy announce it, because they point out Amy hasn't exactly fooled anyone over the prior weeks in a stream of increasingly flimsy trope-related contrivances (shown in made-for-this-scene flashbacks):

* ''Film/KnockedUp'' has another in-universe example. Allison hides her pregnancy at work out of fear that she'll get laid off from her on-camera job as a reporter if her bosses know about it, but eventually her baby bump grows way too large to conceal and her bosses tell her that they know full well that she's pregnant and actually don't mind it.

* Averted in ''Film/{{Fido}}''. Creator/CarrieAnneMoss' real-life pregnancy was written into the film, where her character mentions being pregnant, and the husband commenting that he can't afford to pay for another funeral.

This is more of a problem with TV shows as opposed to films, where there might be an option to either shoot some or all scenes earlier when she is not showing as obviously or reshoot in post-production when the pregnancy is finished. This can still leave the disconcerting effect of an actress having a changing body shape throughout the movie unless she is written as being full term and wears an appropriate pregnancy bump from the start.

* The actress suddenly wears lots of loose, baggy clothing and heavy overcoats to conceal the hump. This can be ''very'' conspicuous if the character normally wears revealing or form-fitting clothing, as if she just woke up one day and decided to dress like Film/AnnieHall.

** ''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 UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic. 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.

* Creator/LauraBailey did this for the first seven episodes of Campaign 2 of ''WebVideo/CriticalRole'', made somewhat easier by the fact that the show involves the cast sitting at a table which usually completely obscures her from the chest down. On the rare occasions she did have to stand up while on camera, co-star Creator/SamRiegel, who sits next to her, would find ways to put himself between the camera and her belly.

* In [[Music/{{Eurythmics}} Annie Lennox's]] "Love Song For A Vampire" was filmed while she was pregnant with her second daughter, and has her was sitting down and wearing an Empire-style dress throughout. "Little Bird", released at the same time, has her in nothing but black. However, in this case, it is subverted as Lennox is not only standing up at all times but is also often standing in profile to the camera, clearly showing the pregnancy.

* Creator/PenelopeCruz became pregnant during the filming of ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanOnStrangerTides'', so her younger sister (also an actress), who appeared similar from some distance, served as her stand-in during some of the more action-heavy scenes.

* When ''Series/{{JAG}}'' actress Creator/CatherineBell became pregnant in season 8, her character Lt. Colonel Sarah "Mac" Mackenzie was in-universe temporarily assigned to the Navy-Marine Corps Judiciary, which to allow her to sit behind a big bench. (Navy-Marine Corps judges don't wear robes.) The show also exploited Bell's pregnancy by having Harm suddenly go through a bout of madness where he sees every woman in the JAG office as being pregnant, followed by the season finale, where she went undercover as the pregnant wife of her real-world husband.

** Vala disappeared later in Season 9, trapped in the Ori's home galaxy to hide Creator/ClaudiaBlack's pregnancy until Vala returned, carrying a DarkMessiah. Her second pregnancy coincided with production of ''Film/StargateContinuum'' and was hidden with oversized camo jackets, huge guns, and artful camera angles.

* In [[Music/{{Eurythmics}} Annie Lennox's]] "Love Song For A Vampire", she was sitting down and wearing an Empire-style dress throughout.
** "Little Bird", released at the same time, has her in nothing but black. However, in this case, it is subverted as Lennox is not only standing up at all times but is also often standing in profile to the camera, clearly showing the pregnancy.

* Creator/ScarlettJohansson's baby bump was edited out in post-production for ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron''. Like the ''X-Men'' example above, the crew tried to shoot most of Comicbook/BlackWidow's scenes early on to avoid having to use a FakeShemp and resorted to digitally replacing the faces of her stunt doubles when she could no longer safely do action scenes. There's a rather ironic scene where Widow reveals that she can't have children after being forcibly sterilized by her former superiors...while wearing a voluminous bathrobe and holding a towel over her stomach to conceal Johansson's baby bump. You can still see some obvious signs of it, however. In the party scene, she talks to Banner from behind the bar to allow it to conceal her torso. In other scenes, she's sitting with laptops while other characters are standing, and then she gets kidnapped by Ultron halfway through, allowing her to spend a good amount of the film sitting down in her cell. Some of the above examples can be found [[http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/pregnant-scarlett-johansson-perform-avengers-2 here]], an amusing list of suggestions for the crew on how to handle it.

** The show got very creative with this, using everything from giant gingerbread castles to Mrs. [=McCluskey's=] head to hide Creator/MarciaCross' pregnancy. But when the plot really could not get away with this, they just called in a double. One episode required Bree to climb a ladder, hiding the double's face. And when Marcia Cross returned (Bree and her family were written off the show for a few months to accommodate her maternity leave) they wrote Bree [[spoiler:as faking a pregnancy]]!

* ''Series/DesperateHousewives'' got very creative with this, using everything from giant gingerbread castles to Mrs. [=McClusky's=] head to hide Creator/MarciaCross' pregnancy. But when the plot really could not get away with this, they just called in a double. One episode required Bree to climb a ladder, hiding the double's face. And when Marcia Cross returned (Bree and her family were written off the show for a few months to accommodate her maternity leave) they wrote Bree [[spoiler:as faking a pregnancy]]!

[[caption-width-right:270:Traylor Howard hiding her first pregnancy during the fifth season of ''Series/{{Monk}}''.]]

* ''Series/{{Walker}}'': Creator/OdetteAnnable got pregnant with her second child, another daughter, and hid it during season 3.

* The use of {{Scenery Censor}}s: for example, she carries lots of paper bags in front of her belly or stands (as pictured above) behind chairs, countertops, or other objects that block the view of her below her midsection. The secret is to not let the camera linger on her long enough for viewers to notice.

* ''Series/Walker'': Creator/OdetteAnnable got pregnant with her second child, another daughter, and hid it during season 3.

** She 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.

* Emily Procter in the final season of ''Series/CSIMiami''. She stopped going into the field, instead appearing mostly in the lab behind a table and wearing an oversized lab coat. She also got a subplot about becoming a mother via adoption.

When an actress gets pregnant, oftentimes it's [[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:

* Shirley Jones (Marian) was pregnant during the production of ''Film/TheMusicMan'' and, it being the 1960's and she was unmarried, wanted to keep it a secret. So she worked with a very tight group of costumers to keep it hidden even from the rest of the production. By the end it had become an open secret, she even recalled after a kissing scene with Robert Preston (Harold Hill) he was very perplexed at the baby bump. In an interview, it is pointed out that if you look very closely during certain scenes, you can see the bump.

Alternatively, the character might just be written to put on a lot of weight, due to a sudden "eating binge" or whatever (see "Frasier" below). Note that if the character is actually hiding her pregnancy in-story, that would make it MySecretPregnancy.

This is more of a problem with TV Shows as opposed to films, where there might be an option to either shoot some or all scenes earlier when she is not showing as obviously or reshoot in post-production when the pregnancy is finished. This can still leave the disconcerting effect of an actress having a changing body shape throughout the movie unless she is written as being full term and wears an appropriate pregnancy bump from the start.

** ''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 COVID-19 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.

* ''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 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.
** Rachael Harris who plays Dr. Linda got pregnant during the break between the third season and the UnCancelled fourth season. This time they [[AvertedTrope didn't bother]] trying to hide it and wrote in a surprise pregnancy as a result of Linda's affair with Amenadiel during the previous season.

* Likewise, Creator/RoxannDawson (Lt. Torres) of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', became pregnant during Season 4. 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). Also due to her pregnancy, there was only one Torres-focused episode in the whole season. Amusingly enough, her character later became pregnant.

* Likewise, Creator/RoxannDawson (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.

** 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. (but Bonham Carter said it's more noticeable in another film she shot a few months earlier, ''Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'', claiming her breasts change size from scene to scene.)

* In the second season of ''Series/{{Life}}'', Creator/SarahShahi's pregnancy was utilized very well to further the story arc: Dani Reese goes off to interview for a job in the FBI, only to be used as a pawn by people in the conspiracy. This allows for the occasional chest-up shot of her while the rest of the cast is solving the mystery of the week.

%%* Emily Procter on ''Series/CSIMiami''.