Basic Trope: The audience knows a woman is pregnant when she or someone else rubs her lower abdomen.
- Straight: A few months after Alice and Bob's wedding, Alice rubs her lower abdomen. This signifies that soon she and Bob will be parents.
- Exaggerated: The moment Alice touches her abdomen, we cut to a scene of her in labour.
- Downplayed: There were some signs — Alice has been throwing up in the morning, craving strange food, etc. Yet, it's only revealed that she definitely is pregnant and not simply high or sick when she rubs her abdomen.
- Justified:
- The pregnancy is causing cramps.
- Alice is Feeling the Baby Kick.
- Inverted:
- Rubbing her abdomen means that Alice had a miscarriage or has just given birth.
- Alice, for some reason, rubs her head when she's pregnant.
- Alice has a habit of rubbing her abdomen and she stops when she's pregnant.
- When Alice gets pregnant, Bob rubs his own abdomen in sympathy.
- We see the baby inside Alice's womb place their hand on the walls of her womb.
- Gender-Inverted: It's Bob who is pregnant and puts his hand on his lower abdomen.
- Subverted: Alice rubs her lower abdomen and it's implied that she's pregnant, but then it turns out that she's just having menstrual cramps.
- Double Subverted: The "period" was just spotting; she's pregnant after all.
- Parodied: Alice rubs her abdomen despite being a lizard and having laid an egg.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice is seen rubbing her abdomen, but after a while, there is still no baby. Then, it's revealed that Alice had a miscarriage, but then we find out that she only thought she had a miscarriage; it was just a heavy period. Now more confident, Alice tries to conceive for real and we see her rubbing her abdomen, indicating that it was successful.
- Averted:
- Alice does not get pregnant.
- Alice does not rub her abdomen.
- Alice only rubs her abdomen after we find out about her pregnancy.
- Enforced: "We can't do the Knitting Pregnancy Announcement since Alice knits all the time already, and morning sickness is gross... let's just have her rub her belly."
- Lampshaded: "That's basically lady sign language for 'I'm pregnant'."
- Invoked: Alice uses this as a way of telling Bob she's pregnant.
- Exploited:
- Defied: Alice keeps her hands off her abdomen for fear of injuring the fetus.
- Discussed: "Do pregnant women really rub their bellies all the time?"
- Conversed: "I'll bet that character's pregnant. She's rubbing her lower abdomen, in a place that's too low for it to be an intestinal bug, and it can't be a period cramp since this show never shows periods."
- Implied: Alice and Bob are background characters, but Alice is seen rubbing her abdomen and is later seen holding a baby who might be hers.
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs: Alice rubs her abdomen on the side and says, "I'm growing a baby here." Bob says, "In your liver?", since that's where Alice's hand was closest to.
- Played for Drama: Alice can't afford to raise a baby, or she's frail, so being pregnant is bad news.
- Played for Horror: Alice is carrying the Antichrist.
Back to Hand on Womb.
