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Basic Trope: An unexpected (and perhaps unwanted) multiple birth.

  • Straight: Alice gives birth to quadruplets.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Alice gives birth to dectuplets! And they're identical!
    • Alice's multiple pregnancy is a Surprise Pregnancy.
    • Alice becomes pregnant while she's already pregnant!
    • Alice's friggin' fetus becomes pregnant while she's still already pregnant!
  • Downplayed: Alice goes in for an ultrasound during her pregnancy, and finds out that she's actually carrying twins.
  • Justified:
    • Alice has been taking fertility drugs, such as clomiphene citrate.
    • Alice went for IVF, and the doctors implanted 10 embryos, assuming (wrongly) that only one or two would take.
    • The fertilized egg divided over and over again, producing genetically identical embryos, before they all divided in the normal way.
    • Even without fertility drugs or other outside intervention, Alice ovulates multiple eggs, and all get fertilized.
    • Alice was a hitherto undiagnosed throwback to when Leporidaeoids were a heavily preyed upon species.
    • Alice found out she was pregnant with multiples during an ultrasound, but in this setting, she can't legally abort them and/or is morally opposed to abortion herself.
    • The story is set before the use of ultrasounds for routine pregnancy monitoring, or even before the technology was invented. Thus Alice has no way of knowing (short of intuition or old wives' tales) that she's carrying more than one baby.
    • Alice, a ΒΌ Sorptarian, has all eight ovaries of a full Sorptarian, instead of the four or two she (as a hybrid) is expected to have.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted:
    • Alice finds out she's pregnant with dectuplets. Her doctor persuades her to abort all but one or two of them, to avoid taxing her body too much and for the well-being of those babies.
    • Alice sees what she thinks is a twin or a triplet, but the ultrasound technician tells her it's just gas or something.
    • Only one of the babies survives. The rest all died, either in-utero or shortly after birth.
    • Alice, a member of a Breeding Cult, has many children, but not all at once.
    • Alice has a Convenient Miscarriage.
  • Double Subverted:
  • Parodied:
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted:
    • Alice does not become pregnant or give birth In-Universe.
    • Alice has only one baby.
  • Enforced:
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: Alice is having trouble becoming pregnant, and her doctor prescribes fertility drugs.
  • Exploited: Alice has the fertility clinic implant all 10 of her embryos so that she can become famous and/or score free stuff.
  • Defied:
    • Alice is cautioned by her doctor upon finding out that she's carrying dectuplets that the pregnancy could be risky to her as well as to the babies, and that he recommends that she abort all but one or two of them. Alice agrees, and has a selective abortion.
    • Alice has second thoughts about using the fertility drugs to become pregnant, or even about becoming pregnant in the first place. She simply puts the pills away in the dark recesses of her medicine cabinet, or disposes of them.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

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