Birth-Death Juxtaposition

"Ain't it dazzling? The light of a new life... and the fading of yours. It's like a painting."

— Capone "Gang" Bege, One Piece

Within an episode (or a chapter or a scene), someone is born or a pregnancy is revealed and someone else dies, emphasizing the cycle of life. A supertrope of Death by Childbirth, but includes all the cases where the death is not the mother, as well as those where it is. The Phoenix is a symbol of the motif. Also a form of Ironic Juxtaposition.

Compare Babies Ever After, Dead Guy Junior, Someone to Remember Him By, Coming and Going (where someone might be conceived), and Life/Death Juxtaposition (where the general concept of "life" is juxtaposed with that of "death").

See Also: Died on Their Birthday, where a character's death takes place on the anniversary of their own birth, and Wedding/Death Juxtaposition, where death occurs close to a wedding, juxtaposing happiness and sadness.

As this is a Death Trope, all spoilers are henceforth unmarked. Beware.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Garaku of Ayakashi Triangle is a humanoid ayakashi Born as an Adult from the brush of a painter who died moments before.
• When it depicts the bombing of Hiroshima itself, Barefoot Gen features Gen helping his mother Kimie give birth to his sister Tomoko within pages of the rest of the immediate family burning to death in the ruins of their home. Sadly, baby Tomoko does not survive, because Kimie is starving and her milk dries up as a result.
• In Bokurano, Maki Anou's battle happens around the time her baby brother is born. With the power of Zearth, she's able to witness it before she dies, even getting to briefly hold the newborn in her arms.
• In the fast-paced anime movie Dead Leaves, one of the focuses is on the conception, birth, aging and death of the main characters' baby, all in one day!
• In Ceres, Celestial Legend, it is revealed the Aya is pregnant just as Toya, the father, is being killed by Mikage. He does live to tell (but barely) due to being the Living MacGuffin, but later he explains to Yuuhi that he is slowly dying anyway as his powers are fading away, and with them, his life.
• When a Digimon dies, their data is recycled into a new Digiegg. The only exceptions are in Digimon Tamers and in Digimon Data Squad when a Digimon is blasted by Kurata's machines.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In the original Dragon Ball, after King Piccolo is fatally wounded by a young Goku, he spits out an egg containing Piccolo Jr., who he intends to continue his mission to kill Goku and take over the world,^note In typical Dragon Ball fashion, while Piccolo Jr. is the main antagonist of the final arc in the series, he becomes an anti-hero for the first arc in the sequel series as well as the interquel movie before fully joining the hero side. before he explodes.
  • This technically happened when Goku got Chi-Chi pregnant just before dying in the Cell games in Z, but it's not shown that Chi-Chi had a son (Goten) until several episodes later (seven years in the storyline).
• Ben and Cross's puppies are born right after a bloody battle in Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin. Notably, Kisaragi's own puppies were killed by the bears during it.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers features some tragic examples with the births and deaths of nations. Nations like Greece and Egypt only became countries themselves after their mothers died. The same goes for the Italies with their grandfather, the British Isle brothers and their mother Britannia, the Germanic nations and Germania, and even Hungary and Magyar. There are possibly many other examples we are not yet aware of, but the fact remains that many of the nations had to lose their parents in order to succeed them and come into their own as countries, in a way being reborn.
• Inuyasha the Movie: Swords of an Honorable Ruler: The film opens with Inuyasha's birth, with his mother Izayoi dying in the process as a result of Takemaru stabbing her with a spear. When the Inu-no-Taisho arrives, he uses Tenseiga to resurrect Izayoi, and then subsequently dies fighting off Takemaru.
• Macross Delta: In Absolute Live, the Siren System child is liberated by Hayate while Freyja dies from the strain of singing, though the two briefly meet when Hayate brings the child to her. The framing of their meeting is even reminiscent of a Death by Childbirth, especially with the child ends up growing up to resemble Freyja as if it were her actual child.
• In Millennium Actress, Chiyoko is born in a great earthquake that took her father's life. Chiyoko expresses the belief that he died so she could be born.
• In Naruto Kurenai is revealed to be pregnant after her husband Asuma is killed.
• One Piece: Invoked and lampshaded by Capone Bege when he's about to shoot Pekoms into the sea, and brought his infant son along to watch. Partly because he's amused by the contrast and juxtaposition, and partly because he wants to get the aforementioned son acquainted with the violence that comes with the life of a mafia boss/pirate (he is the heir to the family business, after all).
• In Penguindrum, Momoka Oginome dies the same day when her baby sister Ringo and the Takakura boys are born.
• The end of Romeo × Juliet mixes this with Babies Ever After, as Romeo and Juliet die but the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue shows the Beta Couple of Benvolio and Cordelia with their firstborn.
• In Sengoku Youko, Shakugan turns herself into a rock just as she hears the birth cries of two babies, whom she saves by doing so. She's technically not dead, but it could take anywhere from years to several millennia before she can take sentient form again, according to Elder Rock.
• Summer Wars: During the scene where the family is mourning the death of Granny Sakae, one of the family babies loudly cries for attention, indicating that new life will continue even as the old passes on.

Comic Books

• There are several examples in ElfQuest comics.
  • There's a moment in The Rebels where the gang is led to believe that the funeral over the death of one colonist will include the sacrifice of a boy as well. Turns out it's just his coming-of-age ceremony... but the ceremony developed from a time when they did kill someone to "accompany" the dead, in part to ease a situation of overcrowding and low resources.
  • In Shards, Krim and Skot declare before a battle that they kind of want to die this time, as they think they lived long enough for ones of their tribe. After Skot manages just that, Krim is all the more determined to die of her wounds until she's told that she's pregnant. After that, she wants to live to protect the child and she does. There's also a Recognition (inducing pregnancy) at the beginning of that storyline, as well as the death of another elf during the fights, so it evens out perfectly across the arc, for the elves at least.
  • In the story Rogue's Challenge, the Wolfrider elders discuss this cycle of life, making the lack of death, or at least danger, responsible for a lack of births. [1]

• The final issue of the (supposedly) final Love and Capes mini-series deals with the death of Windstar, a member of the Liberty League, and also Mark and Abby's Real Estate Agent, in which role he has been prominent throughout the previous four issues. After the League's memorial gathering, Amazonia tells Abby that the tradition on her world is for mourners to undertake "life-affirming" activities. Abby thinks this is a good idea and suggests it to Mark once they're at home again. The issue ends with Abby announcing that she's pregnant.
• In The Kingdom DCComics, soon after Kingdom Come when Superman and Wonder Woman's child is born, Gog arrives and kills a bunch of Amazons on Themyscira in order to kidnap the child.
• Lampshaded in The Maxx - the Leopard Queen dies, but baby leopards appear in Julie's Outback, leading her to comment, "laying it on a little thick, aren't we?"
• The last page of the Squadron Supreme miniseries features the surviving Squadron members mourning the loss of their dead members in the morgue, as well as Arcanna successfully giving birth to her fourth child as the very last panel.
• Whatever Happened to The Caped Crusader?: Batman's spirit is guided to whatever awaits by a vision of his mother Martha, before the final splash page shows the birth of Bruce Wayne, emphasizing the theme that Batman is something of a permanent fixture in Gotham City.
• X-Men #198, "Lifedeath II", has Storm traveling to a small African village that can only support a specific number of people, so whenever a child is born, an elder must die.
• Takes place in the end of last book of the series The Towers of Bois-Maury: The portagonist, Aymar, dies in a battle to recover his family castle, while, at the same time, his wife gives birth to their son.

Comic Strips

• In For Better or for Worse, the Grand Finale reveals that Grandpa Jim died of natural causes shortly after meeting his grandson and namesake James Caine.
• In Rex Morgan, M.D., Avery Milton died while his wife Heather was heavily pregnant, and she went into labour almost immediately.

Fan Works

• In the The Lion King (1994) fanfic Pride Lands Generations, one character (the Large and in Charge king) was torn apart by a pack of jackals while the Starcrossed Lovers were conceiving their cub—with intercuts between the scenes. The fact the dying character was the ancestor of Mufasa and Simba, while those having sex were the ancestors of Zira, only made the juxtaposition all the more meaningful. Looking back, the author has stated that it seems horribly Anvilicious now, but also a good idea at the time, and generally it still works—it's the Circle of Life, after all.
• In Warrior's Secret, Meta Knight dies and in the next chapter Fumu and Bun's younger sibling is born (and named in honor of the dead character). But considering the nature of Star Warriors...
• In A Study in Regret, Mary Watson discovers her pregnancy while on her quest to find her husband. She soon discovers that Dr. Watson has been killed and that Colonel Moran now wishes to get revenge on Sherlock Holmes by murdering her and her child.
• In Chapter 13 of the Superjail! fanfic Extended Stay, the priest in charge is captured, seduced, and killed by one of the female inmates while trying to escape the riot that is going on at the Warden and the Mistress's wedding. At the same time, Mistress is in preterm labor and eventually gives birth to surprise twins.
• As an Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic, Kyoshi Rising follows a similar example to the one below; Avatar Kuruk dies quelling a storm at the North Pole, and the next scene has his successor Kyoshi born in a small Earth Kingdom village to the south.
• In the Touhou Project fanfic ''Gensokyo 20XXV, we have Yume Ni's death of illness taking place around the time when Ran found out she was pregnant, as Chen noted, earlier in said chapter, and, later, lampshading it.
  Chen: Tragedy juxtaposed joy in that scenario and it was through a cruel hand that she had to die so new ones could be born, the ones she'll never get to see. For something to be born, room must be made and someone has to die and, for every thing born, something dies. She died before they were to even be born. She's passed away and Ran-mommie has yet to even give birth.
  • Incidentally, throughout in the series, we've had Ran having babies after other characters have died but the above instance is the most prominent.
• In Rocket Member, Pikachu's mother is killed by Team Rocket, but her unborn twin brothers survive.
• In the Harvest Moon 64 fic Wine Red no Kokoro, Karen was born a few hours before her grandmother Eve died.
• The Sailor Moon story The Bun-Head in the Oven has Usagi's parents dying in a car crash a few months into her pregnancy. Thanks to time-travel, they're able to meet both the adult Chibi-Usa and her newborn self right before dying.
• In the Jem fic The Ripple Effect, Raya gives birth at the same time Eric is killed.
• So We'd Both Be Free: A pregnant Azula falls ill one night. Realizing Azula will likely die, Iroh has her infant removed. Azula lives long enough to name her daughter after her deceased friend Mai.
• In The Seven Misfortunes of Lady Fortune, Nino and Alya are both absent during Gabriel's funeral. Chapter 19 reveals Alya was busy giving birth to their daughter.
• In the Team Fortress 2 fanfic Something New, Scout's mother reveals that he was born on the same day as his grandfather's funeral.
• In chapter 20 of The Vicious Gods Wrath, Grand Elder Moori gives birth to a young child right before Freeza has New Namek destroyed thanks to the Earth Dragon Balls.
• The Killer Rarityverse: The first time Rarity and Applejack meet each other, they're both in the hospital waiting room. Rarity is here for the birth of her sister, and Applejack for the death of her parents. Rarity lacks sympathy, but puts on the act of caring because she feels she needs to.

Films — Animation

• Bolívar, el Héroe: Bolívar's birth occurred near Americo's father's death.
• Coco: The Time Skip at the end has Miguel showing his new baby sister all of the deceased family members upon the ofrenda just before their grandmother puts up a photo of Mama Coco. Fittingly, the novelization confirms that the baby is named Socorro.
• In Mary and Max, Mary and her baby arrive to visit Max just after he died.
• In Shrek the Third, King Harold dies at the beginning of the movie, which kicks off the main plot. Shortly afterward, just as Shrek is departing on the ship to start his quest, Fiona calls out to him to reveal that she's pregnant, and she gives birth to triplets at the end of the movie.

Films — Live-Action

• A Better Tomorrow 2 have an iconic moment near the end, where Kit's daughter was born... just as Kit succumbs to gunshot wounds. He managed to hear his wife telling him the child have his eyes on a payphone before he passes out.
• Blue Bayou: Parker falling unconscious on Antonio and dying shortly after happens at the same time as (and is juxtaposed with) Kathy giving birth to Antonio's daughter.
• The Blue Lagoon: Immediately after witnessing a native being ritually sacrificed in the sacred place, Richard runs back to find Emmeline. He finds her wailing from labor pains.
  • Also a less obvious example in that they eventually name the baby Paddy. Paddy was their foster-father figure who died and left them all alone on the island. Since they had learned very little of the realities of the world at the time of their marooning, it could be said that the original Paddy is the source of their entire concept of death.
• Cyclone (1978): The morning after Monica goes into labor and delivers a healthy baby, the wounded crewman Carmelo dies.
• Man with a Movie Camera, a visual collage of life in the Soviet Union in The Roaring '20s, juxtaposes shots of a funeral procession and people mourning at tombstones with shots of a hospital nursery and a woman giving birth.
• Twofold in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith:
  • More metaphorically, Palpatine's grand speech to the senate proclaiming the reorganization of the Republic into the Galactic Empire occurs simultaneously with Anakin's massacre of the Separatist leadership. The Empire is born as the Confederacy dies.
  • In a more literal sense. Padme dies immediately after Luke and Leia are born, and Darth Vader is "reborn" as Anakin Skywalker "dies". Darth Vader's first breath is juxtaposed against Padme's last.
• The opening hospital scene of Blade with Blade's mother dying from her vampire inflicted wound while giving birth to him.
• The baptism/execution sequence from the end of The Godfather where Michael became the Godfather in both senses of the term. OK. Not quite a birth, but close enough.
• Alien³: Dillon gives the speech about rebirth as Newt and Hicks are cremated just as the new Alien is reborn.
• Steel Magnolias. At the very end of the film, Annelle heads to the hospital to give birth to her child. Earlier, Annelle had asked M'lynn if she minded her and her husband naming the child after her daughter Shelby, whose funeral had been earlier that day. The film begins with a wedding, has a funeral near the end, and ends during an Easter celebration and egg hunt.
• Turner and Hooch, Hooch dies, but shortly after, a new litter of puppies is born and one of them has a striking resemblance to Hooch.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan did a variation where the shots of Kirk racing to get to Spock before he dies are intercut with the birth of the Genesis planet. He lampshades this during his eulogy for Spock afterwards.
  • Star Trek (2009): James Kirk is born in the opening sequence seconds before his father dies.
• Referenced in Addams Family Values:
  Morticia: Children, do you believe that when a new child is born, one of the older children must die?
  Wednesday and Pugsley: Yes.
  Morticia: That's just not true.
  Grandmama: (sigh) Not anymore.
• In the remake Children of the Corn (2009), the main character stumbles around a cornfield, finding the dead bodies of all the evil cult members he'd killed. Interspliced with this scene is another of a creepy ceremony where the cult gathers around to watch one of their members knock up the obligatory horror-flick naked babe. Technically more a Conception/Death Juxtaposition than Birth/Death, but close enough.
• At the end of The Big Lebowski the Dude's annoying friend Donny dies of cardiac infarction; the narrator later tells the audience that Maude is pregnant.
• In the beginning of the 2009 film Evil Angel (with Ving Rhames), a crazed man haunted by Lilith commits suicide by jumping off of a building. Inside that building, a woman gives birth at the exact time the man dies.
• Om Shanti Om: when Om dies in the hospital, a mother gives birth in the next room. The baby turns out to be Om reincarnated.
• In Species II, we see women impregnated by an alien dying and giving birth to their gruesome offspring. Other scenes simply show the alien baby sitting beside its mother's bloody corpse.
• Kuch Kuch Hota Hai starts with the birth of Anjali and the death of her mother Tina.
• In the movie Angus, the titular character's father died as his mother gave birth to him.
  Angus Bethune: My mother was in labor with me for two days, but it was my father who died during childbirth. He had a heart attack waiting for her to deliver.
• After Sandra Bullock's character's husband dies in Premonition, the ending shows her pregnant a few months later, with the child that she conceived with her husband the night before he died.
• Not exactly to the trope, but the alternative(original) ending of John Q. fits. In this ending, the titular character dies, but his heart is given to his son, who needs a transplant.
• Terminator:
  • Terminator Salvation, while technically not ending in a "birth", per se, ends with Marcus giving his heart to a fatally wounded John Connor.
  • Played straight in the original The Terminator: after Kyle Reese dies, Sarah Connor is shown pregnant with their son, John.
• A twisted subversion occurs in the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004), wherein one of the refugees was hugely pregnant when she was bitten by a zombie. She turns into a zombie, and her husband just keeps her tied up in a back room until she gives birth... to an infant who is also a zombie.
• In America is climaxing in a hospital scene showing the birth of the new baby and the death of Mateo.
• The Cleansing of the House montage from the end of the first Children of Dune film (which, incidentally, combines this trope with Death by Childbirth), all set to the tune of a One-Woman Wail. The cleansing includes the executions of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Guild Navigator Edric. It's even shown that the Reverend Mother figures out her fate shortly before that with the use of her Tarot-like cards and doesn't even turn when Stilgar approaches her to slice her throat.
• The Trap (Serbian: "Klopka") revolves around the Sadistic Choice of taking a life to save another. This idea is portrayed in one scene where the ailing son in hospital is saved from a seizure attack while the father shoots a man he is hired to kill, so he could raise money for his son's life-saving operation.
• Mystic River: Jimmy's oldest daughter is murdered the day of his younger twin daughters first communion.
• Four Weddings and a Funeral: Gareth collapses and dies of a heart attack at Carrie's wedding (the third), leading to the funeral.
• Bird Box: The birth of Olympia's baby is contrasted almost immediately with her suicide.
• Near the beginning of The Covered Wagon, there's a scene in which an old pioneer woman has died, followed shortly by the news that another woman has successfully given birth.
• In Eternals, Arishem makes the comparison when explaining to Sersi what the Celestials do for the universe. All the living things inhabiting a planet are sacrificed for the birth of one Celestial, but that Celestial is responsible for bringing to existence billions more lives.
• Boys on the Side: Robin succumbs to her AIDS not long after Holly's baby is born.

Folklore

• There's a legend that when someone is born under the sign of Scorpio, someone in the family has just died or is about to die, and when a Scorpio dies there is a birth in the family. This is because Scorpio is ruled by Pluto (and also Mars), the plaent associated with transformation, death, and rebirth.

Literature

• Charlotte's Web: Charlotte dies in the end, but Wilbur saves her egg sac of 514 baby spiders who hatch in the last chapter. However, only three of them decide to stay with Wilbur — Joy, Arenea, and Nellie.
• The Culture have a custom of doing this whenever somebody dies of old age. Of course, being The Culture, they don't really have to die. It's just social expectation for them to die of old age after a long life. And it isn't necessarily a birth; it could be somebody being resurrected from long-term electronic storage.
• In Orson Scott Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker series, Alvin has six older brothers, making him the seventh son of a seventh son... but the eldest brother, Vigor, dies moments after Alvin's birth. In fact, the only reason he didn't die before Alvin was born was that he clung to life out of sheer determination to make sure Alvin would be born as a seventh son of a seventh son, and thus have the Knack of Making.
• In Robert A. Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil, this happens to the bent protagonist at the end as s/he dies in giving birth.
• In The Stand, one of the survivors of the superflu is a pregnant woman who gives birth after most of the human population is wiped out.
• The Fireman: At the very end of the book, Harper gives birth, just after John dies. And, you know, most of the rest of humanity.
• In Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik, the titular character's grandmother died on the same day as her baby brother is born.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, Alys Vorpatril is 36 hours into her labor when her husband Padma Vorpatril is fatally shot in front of her, and she delivers her son about an hour later.
• At the beginning of Nora Roberts' Born in Shame, Shannon's mother dies in New York as Brianna gives birth in Ireland.
• Used in the first book of The Dark Elf Trilogy. While his family was in the midst of a stealth attack on a rival house, Drizzt was born minutes before his eldest brother, Nalfein, was stabbed from behind by middle brother Dinin. The tenets of drow society cause the two parts of this trope to be linked, as the only reason Drizzt was not sacrificed moments later was because his brother had died: if a newborn male child would result in three or more living male children, then every third such birth must be sacrificed. Nalfein's death put the Do'Urden family under the limit, and Drizzt lived to see another day.
• This is the story behind Miracle, the protagonist of the novel Dancing on the Edge, whose mother was hit by an ambulance, but Miracle survived. Later it's revealed that her mother was attempting to commit suicide and stepped in front of the ambulance on purpose.
• In the Adrian Mole series, elderly Queenie dies shortly after Adrian's sister is born, and at the funeral, he reflects that Queenie must have died so as to "make way" for the baby.
• Guardians of Ga'Hoole:
  • A literal instance with the young owl Nyroc hatching at the same time as a major battle between the aponymus guardians and the Pure Ones, with lots of death. One of the dead is the head of the Pure Ones, Nyroc's father Kludd.
  • A more symbolic birth occurs with this young owl, now known as Coryn, after he abandons the Pure Ones, when he succeeds in retrieving the Ember of Hoole, which makes him the king of the Guardians. Immediately after this an other former member of the Pure Ones, Uglamore, gets infected with rabies and dies. And this is also juxtaposed to the deaths of the previous monarchs of the Guardians.
• Harry Potter (of course) has a symbolic 'rebirth' (surviving the first attempt on his life, and being adopted) the same night his parents are murdered. Later on, Cedric Diggory is killed before Voldemort's resurrection (which involves nearly killing Harry, again). There's also Trelawney's prophecy, connecting Harry and Voldemort in birth and death. And just to make sure the symbolism is clear, the two of them also are linked by phoenix feathers in their wands. Also, the birth of Teddy Lupin followed closely by the deaths of his parents.
• In Dean Koontz' Life Expectancy, protagonist Jimmy is born at the same minute his grandfather dies.
• Not birth exactly, but similar: in The Grapes of Wrath, Rose of Sharon (who's pregnant) and her husband have sex as the family arrives in California. When they get there they discover the grandmother is dead, and Rose of Sharon is horrified as she considers the juxtaposition.
• In N. Perumow's Hierward Chronicles, there are Elemental Mages, which are personalized powers. Those powers can only belong to one generation, so if one of the mages has children, they all begin to lose their powers and die (unless they can secure some auxiliary magic source, but even they are vulnerable, whereas before they just re-spawned if killed). Conversely, if all Mage are wiped out, new are spawned by magic.
• Song of Solomon begins with a man named Robert Smith on the roof of the hospital, falling to his death as he attempts to fly with a suit he has created. One of the women in the crowd of onlookers goes into labor, and the next day gives birth to the protagonist, Milkman, becomes the first black child born in that same hospital. He then grows up and learns to fly himself. Sort of/maybe.
• Enforced out of necessity, due to limited resources, at the beginning of Robert Silverberg's At Winter's End. Almost no one's allowed to conceive a child to begin with; the few who are allowed to procreate are required to wait until someone's committed ritual suicide at the allotted age.
• Warrior Cats: In Twilight, Cinderpelt dies protecting Sorreltail as the queen gives birth to kits; one of the newborns, Cinderkit, is named for her.
• Used towards the end of The End, the final book of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Count Olaf (whose Contractual Boss Immunity seemed to have finally expired) dies right before Kit Snicket (implied to have been related to the Lemony Narrator) gives birth to her child, and Kit herself dies soon afterward.
• In A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Christine Taylor's daughter Rayona is born around the time she receives word that her brother Lee dies in Vietnam.
• Septimus Heap: Played With, since Jenna is rescued by Marcia just as the Queen dies, and she is adopted by the Heaps just as their child dies.
• The Last Dragon Chronicles: Zanna's pregnancy is announced shortly after David's apparent death.
• In the background to A Song of Ice and Fire, Prince Rhaegar (himself long dead by the time the story proper starts, though no less an important figure in it) was born on the same day that his great-grandfather, King Aegon V, died in the Tragedy at Summerhall.
  • In the actual story, Drogo dying the same night Dany's dragons are hatched. They are the first living dragons in over a hundred years.
• The Village Tales novels are big on these, especially The Day Thou Gavest. Justified in that they are Slice of Life novels, and especially justified in The Day Thou Gavest owing to its being a Day in the Life of the whole rural District.
• In James Joyce's Ulysses, an early chapter has Leopold Bloom attending a funeral for his old acquaintance Patrick "Paddy" Dignam, who recently died of a heart attack. Two chapters later, he learns that his old acquaintance Mina Purefoy is in labor in a maternity hospital, and about to give birth to her first child. Bloom later visits her in the hospital to wish her well, underscoring the connection between the two events.
• The Anderssons:
  • Rebecka reveals to her other aunts that she's pregnant the day after Mandi's funeral. And later in the same book, Hannes (Rebecka's son) is born at the same time as his great-grandmother Sofia Margareta is dying from cancer (she seems to live on for a few months after Hannes is born, but her dying is mentioned in the same epilogue as his birth).
  • Decades later, Elin dies on the same day as her great-grand-niece and namesake Elin is born.
• The Irregular at Magic High School:
  • One of the things that helped Maya recover from her Mind Rape (which she perceives as having "killed" her past self) was that it resulted in the birth of Tatsuya, who for various reasons could not have been conceived any other way. Both times a Yotsuba has told the story of their family, they skip over the years in between the massacre of Maya's kidnappers and the announcement that Miya was pregnant, considering that period of time uneventful.
  • In volume 8, Tatsuya is thinking about Honami's Heroic Sacrifice several years ago when a girl who looks just like her enters the room. Pragmatically, this means that another clone of the Sakurai line had been created, the girl being Honami's replacement and "sister". Symbolically, it means that Honami lives in her- not in the sense that they're the same person but that the good she sacrificed herself for didn't die with her body.
• Dragonvarld: Melisande is killed right after giving birth to her sons.

Live-Action TV

• The Afterparty:
  • Invoked when the group suggests Jenn 1 could have done the murder. She protests that she's incapable of it as a pregnant woman. Yasper comments that it would make poetic sense: she kills someone before birthing another.
    Yasper: The number stays the same!
  • In the final episode, we learn Jenn 2 actually did give birth on the night of Xavier's murder.
• Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace: Ruyi's second child is born right after Yihuan's death.
• Done in the Farscape series finale. D'Argo dies right after Aeryn gives birth during a battle. They decide to name the kid after him.
• The first episode ("33") of the series proper of Battlestar Galactica (2003) has people dying left and right throughout, and in the very last scene the characters get word that a baby was born in the fleet.
• Big Love. Family patriarch Bill is killed. The epilogue, despite being ten months later, is of his grandson's christening. (Although the math would indicate that he was indeed born soon after Bill's death, playing the trope even straighter).
• In Charmed, Kid from the Future Chris dies while he is born. (It makes sense in context.)
• In the final episode of Desperate Housewives there is a montage that intercuts the final moments of Mrs. Mccluskey with the birth of Julie's daughter.
• Friends: when Phoebe's grandmother dies, Monica rushes in and tells the group that a couple is having sex in a car out on the street. The rest of the gang tries to tell her that now isn't the time, but Phoebe isn't that disappointed. "It's kinda cool. 'Cause it's like, you know, one life ends and another begins." Monica leans down and whispers to the others, "Not the way they're doing it."
• Community: In the episode where the story is about the death of Pierce's mother, Abed's story in the background is about a Greendale student going into labor.
• Game of Thrones: Ramsay murders his father the day Lady Walda Frey gives birth to their son, his half-brother. He then has his dogs tear apart Walda and the baby.
  • House of the Dragon: In the pilot, the labor of Queen Aemma is juxtaposed with The Tourney that was organized to honor her incoming son, with knights gladly killing each other. Subverted in that the son dies, shortly after his mother following the Traumatic C-Section that was meant to save him.
• Home and Away - Kitt's baby is born, but then she finds out Beth (her mother) has just been hit by a truck.
• The House episode "Babies And Bathwater" is all over this trope, climaxing with saving the baby by emergency C-section while the mother bleeds out.
• Lost: "Do No Harm." Boone dies, and Aaron is born. This episode also had the fitting usage of the musical theme, 'Life & Death'. Said theme would reoccur throughout ths series.
• The L Word: Tina gives birth very shortly after Melvin dies of his cancer.
• NCIS: In "Newborn King." The poor woman gives birth in the backseat of a broken down car, parked in a gas station garage, in a blizzard, on Christmas, during a shootout with Russian mercenaries who want to kill her and kidnap her child, with Gibbs as the midwife. This is interspersed with a desperately outnumbered and outgunned Ziva singlehandedly defending them against an onslaught of Russian mercenaries.
• Toyed with in Scrubs: Dr. Cox doesn't want his daughter's birth to be announced until later, over concern that her birth will forever be associated with Laverne's death. His son Jack's birthday had already been associated with Ben's death in an earlier episode; rather than having a birthday party the had planned for him, they had a funeral.
  • JD explicitly states that this is one of the beautiful things about working in a hospital in the episode "My Philosophy", such as patients receiving life-saving donor organs from someone who just died or (unfortunately) the possible death of either a mother or child to save the other's life. He refers to it as the "circle of life" (he likes that lion cub).
• The episode of Sesame Street where Big Bird finds out Mr. Hooper died ends with a scene where Big Bird (after hanging his drawing of Mr. Hooper on his wall as a memorial to him) is introduced to a friend's new baby.
• The protagonist of Living Biblically decides to live according to the bible after his best friend dies. At the start of the series, his wife is pregnant.
• Mad Men: One episode after the death of her father Eugene, Betty Draper gives birth to a son (all the while seeing hallucinations of her recently-deceased dad). She decides to call him Eugene.
• Alluded to towards the end of Rebelde Way. Blas dies around the same time Feli knows of her pregnancy.
• Among the guest stars on Robin Hood was a mother and daughter; as the daughter is giving birth to her own child, her mother (having been accused of witchcraft) is being dunked in the lake. Averted considering the mother is saved, but her near-execution is inter-cut with scenes of her daughter in labour.
• The final episode of Six Feet Under begins with a birth, while every previous episode began with a death. Played with by having the baby barely live through birth, though he turns out fine in the end.
• ER:
  • In the infamous "Love's Labor Lost" episode, a woman dies in childbirth.
  • This bookends the aptly titled episode "Motherhood", which starts out with Dr. Susan Lewis delivering her sister's baby and concludes with the death of Dr. Peter Benton's elderly mother.
  • And it's played out literally in the episode "Great Expectations"—as Carol gives birth, an elderly woman in the room next door dies of renal failure. (Though a more direct version of the trope was averted for Carol, since she had complications during the birth of her second twin, but ended up okay.)
• Jessie: Lampshaded by Ravi, as Millie the Mermaid "dies" the same day that Mrs. Kipling's eggs hatch.
  Ravi: For every imaginary death comes a reptilian birth.
  Jessie: Try stitching that on a pillow.
  Ravi: Oh, I did!
• In the third season finale of Private Practice Maya (who is pregnant) and her midwife, Dell, are hit by a drunk driver. The baby is born prematurely and survives, Dell dies.
• Barney Miller had a New Year's Eve episode like this. An extremely pregnant lady is brought into the station house as Fish goes out to talk a suicidal man from jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. The pregnant lady gives birth in Barney's office, helped by Liz and Wojo, who's had experience in Vietnam. Fish returns, looking haggard. Greeted with "Hey, we had a baby!" he replies "You win one, you lose one."
• Law & Order: UK: DS Ronnie Brooks gushes to partner DS Matt Devlin about the birth of his grandson. Within minutes, Devlin is gunned down in a drive-by shooting.
  • More like birthday, but in the episode "Hard Stop", DI Wes Leyton celebrates his birthday with his fellow officers, leaves for a celebratory dinner with his wife...and is shot to death in the station parking lot.
• On Law & Order, Briscoe and Green spend a chaotic day investigating several crimes, including the disappearance of an expectant mother, who they fear has been murdered by her adulterous husband. Fortunately, the woman is found alive (she had actually been kidnapped by a deranged woman who wanted to steal her baby)—but in labor. Briscoe later comments that it was actually nice to have one good thing happen among the slew of murders that they dealt with that day.
• Designing Women does this. There's a baby being born and an older lady dying, and a teary scene with Dolly Parton as an angel.
• In the Dutch drama series Dokter Deen, this is done very, very blatantly. The titular doctor is asked by the former principal of the orphanage she was in to "help her die" before the cancer does. After consulting another doctor about this, she is given the green light to euthanise the old woman, and doctor Deen talks to her for a few moments before administering the medication... only to be interrupted in their talk by a phone call about another of her patients, who is going into labor.
• On The X-Files episode "Existence," the scene where Scully gives birth is cut with scenes of a high-speed chase that ends with Alex Krycek's death.
  • In "Paper Clip", the trope is directly referenced by Navajo medicine man Albert Hosteen, who says that each time a life begins on Earth another must end. Scully's sister Melissa, who was shot in the previous episode, spends most of this one hospitalized, and Hosteen takes the birth of a white buffalo calf within his reservation as a bad sign.
• In the first episode of The City Hunter, Yun Sung's birth is intercut with the carnage of a bomb aimed at the Korean President.
• In Downton Abbey, Matthew Crawley, who dies shortly after his wife Mary gives birth.
  • Not to mention Lady Sybil, who dies of eclampsia on the day her daughter (whom Tom names Sybil to honour her) is born.
• Call the Midwife: Given the subject matter, this occurs almost Once per Episode.
  • In one case, a man makes a point of holding on just long enough to see his grandson born in the next room.
    "I'm just leaving, I'm afraid. And you've just arrived! We're passing, you and I."
  • Invoked when a mother-to-be learns that her husband is terminally ill and has her labour induced early so he can see his baby in his final moments.
  • In a Series 11 episode, Nurse Lucille miscarries as she's helping a woman give birth.
• In the first season finale of The Borgias, Lucrezia gives birth in Rome while a plague hits Naples.
• The first season finale of Continuum features both the death and the birth of Edouard Kagame, in that order.
• Under the Dome played it extremely straight - Alice the doctor died after delivering a baby, which the new mother named Alice in her honor.
• The White Queen: In Episode 6, Queen Elizabeth gives birth to a son while her mother Jacquetta lays dying. Shortly after both her son and her mother have passed away, Anne Neville and Richard of Gloucester are making love on their wedding night and conceiving their own son.
• Breaking Bad has the episode "Phoenix", where Holly White's birth and Jane Margolis' death occur in the same episode. The episode's Double-Meaning Title references this, invoking the myth of the phoenix.
  • Similarly, the previous episode is called "Mandala" (a Sanskrit word denoting the circle of life and death). It opens with Combo being shot dead and ends with Skyler going into labor.
• In an episode of Diagnosis: Murder, a teenage girl registered as an organ donor is murdered and her eyes go to a blind woman. While not a literal birth in this case, the blind woman is reborn in some sense.
• In the Doctor Who episode "The End of Time", the Tenth Doctor evokes this regarding the Time Lord's ability to regenerate when mortally wounded, since it's the death of one version of him and the birth of another, who both is and is not "him".
  The Doctor: I'm dead... and a new man saunters away.
• Done in Rookie Blue. Tracy is with Noelle the whole time while the latter is in labour, and once the baby is born she is called by Andy and informed that Jerry, her fiancé, has been killed.
• Bones: In "The Hole in the Heart", Vincent Nigel-Murray is murdered, and Brennan winds up in bed with Booth, seeking comfort over the loss of her favorite intern. The following episode, "The Change in the Game", ends with Angela giving birth and Brennan announcing that she is pregnant with Booth's child. "The Conspiracy in the Corpse": Booth (and the audience) learns Daisy is pregnant with Sweets' son and the episode ends not just with Sweets' death but his autopsy.
• In the second-season opening episode of the police drama High Incident, Officer Gayle Van Camp is wounded in a shoot-out and rushed to the hospital. It initially appears that she's going to be okay, but then she develops a pulmonary embolism...just as another officer's wife goes into labor in the same hospital. The scene cross-cuts between the two women as one gives birth and the other dies. Lampshaded by the title of the episode: "Hello/Goodbye."
• The season three finale of Saving Hope features the birth of Alex's baby and the death of Joel, who was possibly the baby's father.
• Season seven of Royal Pains ends with Divya going to visit her critically ill grandmother while Evan and Paige prepare for the birth of the child they plan to adopt. Right around when Divya discovers her grandmother has already died, the mother of Evan and Paige's child goes into labor. The shots of the birth are then intercut with the shots of the funeral.
• Scorpion has this in the ominously titled episode "Arrivals and Departures". The case of the week involves an outbreak of an ancient fungus in the hospital where Walter's sister Megan is confined. Toby and Happy get trapped in the hospital's cafeteria along with a very pregnant lady. By the episode's climax, the fungus has been contained, allowing the woman to give birth safely, while Walter's family gathers to see his sister die.
• On General Hospital, BJ Jones was killed in a school bus accident and her heart was donated to her ailing cousin Maxie. Her relieved parents celebrated by making love—and conceived their second child.
  • The show's legendary "Clink, BOOM" moment featured Mafia Princess Lily Corinthos being killed via Car Bomb the day after learning she was pregnant (and at precisely the moment Brenda and Jax married).
• In the Arrow season 3 premiere, Lyla and Diggle's baby is born, and the episode ends with Sara Lance's murder. In the next episode, the baby is named Sara.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Begotten", Kira gives birth to the O'Briens' son Kirayoshi. At the same time, an infant changeling Odo adopted begins to die.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager Grand Finale "Endgame", Tom Paris and B'elanna Torres' child is born as the future Admiral Katherine Janeway, the Borg Queen, and most of the Borg Collective die.
• In Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, after the Zyurangers succeed in finally recovering the dinosaur eggs, Burai reflects that soon dinosaur babies will be born while his life is nearing its end.
• Sense8: Riley's husband dies just prior to her delivering their daughter. Then the baby dies too.
  • Sun was born in a cemetary as her mother went into labor unexpectedly while visiting a grave.
• St. Elsewhere:
  • In "Haunted", the Craigs' son Stephen dies after getting into a car accident - caused by his using both cocaine and barbiturates - while driving himself and his heavily pregnant new wife Yvonne Galecki back to Ohio at the end of the previous episode "Fathers and Sons". The next day, Dr. Roxanne Turner is forced to deliver the baby by C-section while Yvonne is still comatose. The baby is a girl, who is later named Barbara.
  • In "Family Feud", Senator Gordon Endicott is assassinated in the St. Eligius chapel while his mother Augusta is undergoing quadruple bypass surgery. The next day, his heavily pregnant niece Sarah Preston is distraught by not only his death but the effect that it is having on her grandmother. The trauma of the situation causes her to go into premature labor and the baby is delivered by C-section. It is a boy, whom she names Gordon after her late uncle.
• Savage Kingdom: Matsumi was looking for a place to have her own cubs when she came across Saba's young cubs. She ended up killing Saba's daughter.
• In Foundation, the Galactic Empire is ruled by a "genetic dynasty" comprised of clones of the first Emperor. There are three clones at different stages in their lives active at any one time, informally known as Brother Dawn (the heir), Brother Day (the ruling Emperor) and Brother Dusk (former Emperor, elder statesman and advisor). When a new Brother Dawn is created, the current Brother Dusk becomes known as Brother Darkness and is euthanised by disintegration, and the infant Dawn is baptised with his ashes.
• Succession: In the third episode of season 4, without much foreshadowing, Logan suddenly dies on an airplane traveling to meet with the head of GoJo right before the closure of Waystar acquiring the company. The entire episode provides a play-by-play of the event, ending with Logan being announced dead on arrival when the plane finally relands and his body being wheeled away in a body bag. At the beginning of the very next episode, it's revealed Shiv, who is currently estranged and in the process of divorcing her husband Tom, is pregnant.
• ALF's 1987 Christmas Episode which doubled as a Very Special Episode had Alf stuck at a hospital; where he met a girl dying of cancer and helped deliver a baby. The juxaposition at the end was not subtle.
• October Faction: Alice gave birth to her babies while Presidio was slaughtering her people nearby, including her husband Omari.
• The Last of Us (2023): Ellie was born at almost the same moment that her mother Anna was bitten by one of the Infected, and it's implied that this highly unlikely circumstance was the cause of Ellie's immunity to the cordyceps infection. Anna ultimately receives a Mercy Kill from her friend Marlene, who promised to take care of the newborn Ellie.

Music

• Invoked in a subtle way by avant-garde composer Joseph Byrd on his 1969 album The American Metaphysical Circus. The second-to-last track, "Leisure World" is a fake ad for a retirement community (voiced by Ernie Anderson) but toward the end, we hear the sounds of a man moaning in pain. After a pause, the album ends with an instrumental reprise of an earlier song on the album, sounding like it's being played by a mobile on a baby's crib.
• Dave Matthews Band's song "Funny the Way it Is" includes a reference to this among other things.
• Edwin's "Alive" explicitly evokes the trope in one line.
• Going along with the Lost entry above, Michael Giacchino even named the music that plays during the montage "Life and Death".
• In "Daisy" by Halfway to Hazard, the eponymous child is born to a mother who dies while giving birth:
  Eight years later we got married, and the day her water broke
  The doctor said there's complications, but I still had hope
  She was gonna make it 'cause she told me so, even thought it wasn't quite the truth
  Well I know she's an angel, and now she's got her wings
  Yeah, my sweet Daisy loves the hell outta me
• The main theme of Live's "Lightning Crashes". A woman dies and a baby is born simultaneously in the same hospital.
• The theme of "And When I Die", written by Laura Nyro and Covered Up by Blood, Sweat & Tears.
  And when I die
  and when I'm dead, dead and gone,
  There'll be one child born and
  a world to carry on, to carry on
• A similar theme in "The Weight She Fell Under" by Parenthetical Girls. After describing the girl's death,
  Strange, this would come at the same age
  that your mother took his name
  and labor pains would collapse her fragile frame
• Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto" chronicles a guy's life from birth to his murder, and as he dies, another baby is born, with the suggestion that his fate will be the same.
• Pink Floyd:
  • In The Wall (both the album and the film), at the end of the song "In The Flesh?", we hear an airplane coming down for a bombing dive, implying on the album (and showing in the film) the death of Pink's father, and just right after, the sound of Pink crying, announcing his birth to the world at the beginning of "The Thin Ice".
  • A metaphorical example is found in "Comfortably Numb". After crossing the Despair Event Horizon and having a Freak Out for the last half a dozen songs or so, Pink gets injected with drugs so that he can go perform his next show. It's in this moment where the "worms" eat into his brain and his delusions (or maybe not) of being Neo-Nazi begin.
• Not quite the same, but Bruce Springsteen's "Reason to Believe" has a verse that begins with a baby being baptized, and ends with a man being buried.
• Done in "The Breath You Take" by George Strait. The narrator's father takes his last breath on the same day that the narrator's son is born.
• Tears for Fears: A verse in "I Love You But I'm Lost" has a (metaphorical) birth which is then quickly followed by death: "Came to life in my arms and then turned to dust".
• The second stanza of "Two Teardrops" by Steve Wariner:
  Last night I sat in the waiting room
  The nurse walked in and gave me the news
  It's a baby girl and they're both fine
  An old man sittin' not 10 feet away
  Just lost his wife and he said to me
  You've got a brand new angel and I've lost mine
  I guess the good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away
  And we both wiped a teardrop from our face…
• Embrace's Music Video for "All You Good Good People" does this with the execution of a condemned murderer followed by the birth of a baby.

Mythology & Religion

• The Bible:
  • In 1 Samuel 4, Phinehas' wife goes into labor when she heard that her father-in-law and husband were dead, and she gives birth to Ichabod (meaning "The Glory is not") around the time of her death.

Podcasts

• In The Magnus Archives, this is the nature of the birth of Agnes Montague, Avatar of the Desolation. Her mother gave birth to her on a pyre, and when she went into labor, she was set ablaze. Once the fires died down, her mother was ash, and Agnes was born untouched.

Theatre

• Hamilton: "Dear Theodosia," Burr and Hamilton's Parental Love Song to their respective newborn children after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, is immediately followed by Hamilton learning that his best friend Laurens died fighting in South Carolina. Notably, Laurens' actor returns in Act 2 to play Hamilton's son Philip after he's aged.
• In the final scene of The Insect Play, all the recurring characters are dying, but a human couple have a newborn baby.
• Rock of Ages ends with bar owner Dennis perishing by unknown reason, followed by Drew and Sherrie conceiving. To make things all the more joyful for the finale, Dennis reappears as an angel and shoots glitter everywhere, and the birth of the baby via Express Delivery.

Video Games

• Dreamfall Chapters begins with this, as a scene featuring the funeral for April Ryan is juxtaposed with the birth of Saga, the game's chief new character.
• In Shining Force III it is referenced that Gracia was born at the moment that Julian's father died.
• Unicorns in Tales of Symphonia apparently work like this. The instant one dies, another is born.
• The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny Sound Stage where the Materials meet the StrikerS cast during the time of Vivid reveal that, in the A's Portable Alternate Timeline, Reinforce Eins died shortly after the birth of Reinforce Zwei.
• The opening cutscene of Pharaoh has the current ruler explaining to his son the death of his own father right around the time of the kid's birth.
• Mandus' epic closing lines in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, about his and the machine's death at the beginning of the 20th century.
  "And as the dust settled on my open eyes and we lay together embraced forever, I heard miles above us, the sounds of the city turning over in its sleep. A church bell ringing out. And in that moment, the new century was born."
• The Red Grail, one of the Eldritch Abominations in Cultist Simulator, is an especially squicky example. She is the goddess of birth, sex, and cannibalism, which her cults regard as a sort of birth-in-reverse.
• At the end of What Remains of Edith Finch, Edith succumbs to the Finch family's curse of dying inopportunely. Her demise comes while she's giving birth to Christopher Finch.
• In Subnautica, the Sea Emperor collapses, dying, moments after Ryley triggers the long-delayed hatching of her five offspring.

Visual Novels

• In Higurashi: When They Cry, Akasaka's wife dies (from falling down the stairs while pregnant, so it's not exactly Death by Childbirth) but the baby survives. There's only one arc where she survives.
• This is part of Marie's backstory from Dies Irae. She was a child born underneath the guillotine of the French Revolution right as her father executed a priest, now bearing a decapitation scar around her neck and only able to sing the cursed refrain of the guillotine song.

Webcomics

• In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, there are always 2,438,165 Fae. When one dies, their relatives get to auction the rights to have a kid, or a random Fae becomes a parent all of a sudden.
• In Anders Loves Maria, the titular Maria gives birth and dies, while one of the other characters is busy catapulting herself off a bridge.
• In Gunnerkrigg Court, a human with fire-elemental blood passes their life force onto their first child. They grow weaker as the child grows older, and die when the child is about 12 years old. Surma Carver was one such person; her daughter Antimony only learns of these facts, and that she'll go through the same thing as well, three years after Surma's death.
• Homestuck: All the newly born ecto-biological children arrive on earth through meteors and a few characters die. John crashes and kills his Grandmother (actually ecto-biological mother) under a joke book. Jade's Grandfather carried a flintlock with him and accidentally discharges it into Colonel Sassacre, Dave arrives with Maplehoof and she dies on impact, and Rose kills all the marine life in the lake she lands in. Each is then picked up by their guardian and taken to be raised.
• The last chapters of the first run of Tina's Story featured the birth of Tina's brother, Timothy, followed by the deaths of Sean and Ray's mother, Miriam.
• Unsounded: Duane died when his infant son was so young that Simon retains no memories of his father.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar Roku's death a hundred years ago is shown, followed by a scene of the birth of Aang. More generally, whenever an Avatar dies the next Avatar is born within the hour.
  • Played with in The Legend of Korra. Pema's baby is born on the same day that the Equalists attack Republic City. The "death" in this case is not that of a person but of Republic City (as we know it, anyway).
  • In the episode "Beginnings" Wan has bonded with Raava, and they become the Avatar, fighting to maintain peace among the humans. Years later, we see an aged Wan, dying alone on an unknown battlefield, regretting that they could not keep the peace. Raava says she'll always be with him in all of his lifetimes, as he breathes his last breath and she leaves his body. The screen fades to white and a baby's cry is heard, symbolizing the beginning of the Avatar Cycle and the birth of the second Avatar.
• One episode of Beavis And Butthead has Butt-Head walking through a hospital ward, manages to dress in the proper hospital scrubs that a doctor would wear, and comes across both a man who had died after being shot in one room and the exact moment of a woman delivering a baby in another.
• Horseland: The "Mosey" episode revolves around Sarah handling the loss of her old barn cat Mosey, after he gets hit by a car and passes away in a snowstorm. In the final scene set at the following spring, Teeny the pig gives birth to a new baby piglet whom Sarah becomes attached to and names him "Little Mosey" in his honor.
• In Thunder Cats 2011, the Petalars are introduced as a new baby is born. A wizened elder welcomes him into the world with a philosophic Final Speech, then peacefully collapses and withers away moments later.
• Season 11 of the The Simpsons has this in a way. Shortly after the birth of the Nahasapeemapetilon Octuplets, Maude Flanders is written off seven episodes later.
• The final episode of the Life series of Once Upon a Time shows the birth of the protagonist's son and the death of his grandfather due to old age, highlighting the continuity of life and Book Ending the series.
• In the Bobby's World episode "The Music" Bobby befriends an elderly crossing guard with a love of music who dies near the end. Three episodes later, his twin baby brothers are born.
• One Wild Kratts special features a school of salmon that complete migration, lay their eggs, and die. The eggs hatch into guppies and restart the salmon life cycle.
• Happens at the end of the Bravestarr episode "Sunrise, Sunset." Dorn's father passes away moments after his grandson is born.

Real Life

• A man once wrote in to a magazine about how his wife suffered a fatal injury during a motorcycling accident. She died, but their son was born prematurely.
• In superb Real Life situations of nightmares, at least two or three women near the end of pregnancy have been murdered by other women (usually the killer has medical training) in order to cut out and steal their children.
• A young British man was murdered at a bus stop while going to see his new baby in hospital.
• As a child, Surrealist artist Max Ernst's pet bird died just before his sister was born. He thereafter associated himself with a bird.
• A story from a Pakistan Earthquake. A woman was found dead in the rubble, but her newborn in her arms was safe.
• The months after 9/11 — as well as a recent special — featured the stories of women who were pregnant that day (many of whom were near to their delivery date) but lost their husbands in the attacks.
  • Over 13,000 children who were born that very day represent this to their families and communities. For some of their mothers, the shock and stress of the day's events caused early labor.
• Three days after Anna Nicole Smith gave birth to daughter Dannielynn, her son, Daniel, died of an accidental drug overdose.
• Two days after the death of former First Lady Barbara Bush, granddaughter Lauren Bush gave birth to her second son.
• NASCAR's constant evolving results in lots of different variants of this.
  • In a "changing of the guard" way, the 1992 Hooters 500, series finale to the 1992 Winston Cup season, is remembered for both being Richard Petty's final start and the first career start for Jeff Gordon.
  • The seventh and final championship of Richard Petty's was immediately followed by the first of Dale Earnhardt's championships. The seventh and final of Earnhardt's championships was immediately followed by the first of Jeff Gordon's.
  • The 2001 Daytona 500 marked the first NASCAR race broadcasted on Fox in the first year of a six year split contract between Fox and NBC, as well as the last race for Dale Earnhardt, who was killed on the last lap.
  • The 2014 season marked the first year of NASCAR's current elimination-style Playoff format, as well as the last year of the 2007-2014 contract that split the season coverage between Fox (first third), TNT (a few races in the middle of the season), and ESPN (the final races of the year including the Chase). A year after this, a new contract was introduced that split the season coverage between FOX in the first half and NBC in the second half.
  • The 2016 season was the first year for the charter system and the last season for both Sprint's sponsorship of the Cup Series as well as the no-stage format.
• A woman gave birth to her daughter days after her mother died from coronavirus.
• Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour. The king had already blown through two previous wives in his mission to get a legitimate son to inherit his kingdom, and she died from complications shortly after that son's christening. Her personal emblem was a phoenix (possibly to make things easier for the carpenters getting rid of Anne Boleyn's falcon), leading to this little poem:
  Here a phoenix lieth, whose death
  To another phoenix life gave birth
  It is to be lamented much
  The world at once ne'er knew two such
• When TV and Radio stations have to end, they've got to be replaced quickly so as not to cause dead air. As such, the somber end of many beloved channels on both mediums are soon followed by celebration of their successors.
• An example not involving human lives: Toaplan's final Shoot 'Em Up was Batsugun in 1993; the company would declare bankruptcy one year later. Batsugun is known for being the Trope Maker for Bullet Hell, featuring an unusually high number of bullets on the screen for its time. In short, the "death" of a company spawned the "birth" of a trope that would redefine a video game genre forever. Additionally, many of Toaplan's staff would go on to form "child" companies like Gazelle, Takumi, and CAVE (itself one of the most prolific contributors to the bullet hell subgenre).
• After the Turkey-Syria earthquakes of 2023, rescue efforts among the massive piles of debris were hampered by cold temperatures and snow, and the death toll rapidly climbed into the upper thousands. But found alive in the debris was a newborn baby boy, whose mother had given birth to him while trapped. Sadly, the mother did not survive.
• This Bookends the final three chapters of Prince Harry's memoir Spare. The first finds him having a confrontation with his father and brother within minutes after his grandfather's funeral. The next depicts the birth of his daughter Lilibet. And the last finds him and his wife visiting his mother's grave and his grandmother dying a few days later.
• Most female octopuses die shortly after giving birth, with ones that lay eggs protecting the brood until they hatch even as they slowly die of starvation.
• Stephen Hawking was born on the day when Galileo died, and ultimately died on the day when Albert Einstein was born.
• When stars die, their remains become nebulae that eventually be born into new stars.

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