The opposite of Screaming Birth. When a show wants to avoid graphic details and a screaming woman pushing a child through her pelvis, such as in a children's show or in a comedy (sometimes for humor, sometimes to avoid wasting airtime on something unfunny), a birth becomes a simple as going to the hospital and popping out the kid like a PEZ candy. Sometimes, the hospital isn't even necessary.
Rarely
Truth in Television, though every once in a while childbirth is
relatively quick and painless. While the shortest recorded time for an American woman in labor in the last hundred years with both the child and the mother surviving is 23 minutes, the national average is just over six hours of labor. In cases of extremely short labor, there are typically complications of varying severity that cause or result from the unexpectedly simple and quick situation.
This trope applies to practically
any birth that is neither human nor equine.
Often results in
Born in an Elevator, though that trope is usually accompanied by a
Screaming Birth and should be added to the appropriate page.
Examples:
Western Animation
- Used in the Futurama episode The Luck of the Fryish, subverting Screaming Birth where Fry's mother turns out to be screaming at the sports game on the radio.
Film
Literature
Live-Action TV
- In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Child". this is justified by the fact that Troi's pregnancy is the result of the manifestation of a powerful energy being. Also acknowledged in-universe.
Folklore
- Irish pirate queen Grace O'Malley reputedly had a baby belowdecks during combat, and still managed to join the fight not long after, pistol in hand, and screaming at her crew (and opponents) to "keep quiet, or you'll wake the baby."
Video Games
- A female dwarf in Dwarf Fortress will give birth in the middle of a task, pick up the baby and go right back to what she was doing.
- Not quite a straight example on account of DF suffering from a fairly extreme case of Video Game Time.
Real Life
- Female horses are known as the birth-giving queens of the whole animal kingdom, or at least among the animals most people know. There's a saying that goes, "A watched mare never foals," and most horse breeders will agree with this. The minute you leave the mare alone is the minute the foal will hit the ground.
- It's said that sometimes plow mares would just give birth, still in harness, during lunch and be back to plowing right on schedule.
- Invoked by Bill Maher, who implied that China was closer to seeing birth this way than the US was.
