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"Ma'am? Come along, ma'am. Let's get you to a nice, clean carpet."
Beezus: And twice, back around Thanksgiving, Mother threw up after breakfast.
Ramona: That's nothing, I've thrown up heaps of times, and mince pie always makes me want to urp.
Beezus: But ladies who are going to have babies sometimes throw up in the morning.
Ramona: They do?
Ramona Forever (Ramona Quimby series)

A surefire way to detect pregnancy is puking in the morning, more efficient even than missing a period.

Never mind the fact that in Real Life, pregnant women may or may not get intense nausea which may or may not lead to vomiting which can happen at any time of the day (though The Other Wiki says that morning sickness is most common in the morning — not because it's a special time of day but because the nausea feels worse on an empty stomach). Of course the latter part isn't always used; pregnant women in fiction will often vomit at some random part of the day, often causing another character (often male) to comment, "Why do they call it 'morning sickness' if it happens any time of the day?"

Sometimes even animal characters will get morning sickness, despite it mostly being a human thing.

Because morning sickness is used so often as a tell for pregnancy, and because vomiting for other reasons tends not to come up as often in fiction, this causes expectations in the audience any time a female character is seen throwing up. If said character then goes on to speculate that the nausea must be stomach flu or food poisoning, that's as good as holding up a positive pregnancy test as far as most works of fiction are concerned. As a result, having the true cause of nausea be a surprise to the audience can be difficult to pull off. In some cases, Pregnancy Faint is used as it is a less common example of a tell for pregnancy.

Particularly egregious if it happens hours or days after the pregnancy is supposed to have been conceived — not only should no sign of pregnancy be detectable for over a week, but morning sickness should take about a month at least to manifest.

Somewhat justified in the case of a Mister Seahorse situation, because there's (usually) no missed period for him to tip him off before the nausea begins. (However, it's not usually justified in that situation for pregnancy to be the first guess when he starts feeling nauseous and/or vomiting.)


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Crayon Shin-chan has a short arc detailing Misae's pregnancy with her second child, Shin-Chan's kid sister Himawari, where she ends up feeling sickly with a terrible appetite and being prone to vomiting. Shin-Chan suggests to his mother that she might feel better after watching a movie, and flips on the TV... just as the film channel happens to be playing Alien, specifically the chestbursting-lunch scene. Cue Misae throwing up.
  • CLANNAD ~After Story~: When Nagisa is throwing up in the sink, Akio good-naturedly teases her about possibly being pregnant. When Tomoya snaps at him about it, he taunts him that if Tomoya was a man she should be by now. Cue Sanae cheerfully announcing "She's pregnant."
  • In Fruits Basket, we see Kyoko throwing up in the sink right before she tells Katsuya that she's pregnant.
  • Subverted in the Fushigi Yuugi Eikoden OVA. Mayo is 3 months pregnant, and sits up in bed, heaving, thinking that it's just morning sickness (in her mind, a small price to pay for bearing Tamahome's child, especially in lieu of Miaka), but instead she vomits up a magical orb that allows her to see what Tamahome is up to.
  • In Yuu Watase's Imadoki!!, Arisa's pregnancy is revealed when she vomits, but insists she hasn't had anything to drink that night.
  • Used to great effect in Chapter 274 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War when the 198 chapter long Running Gag about how Kashiwagi and Tsubasa are probably going to end up with a Teen Pregnancy comes to a head when she collapses from nausea while reconciling with him after briefly trying to let Maki have him instead. Cut to her visiting the hospital with Dr Tanuma having a look of shock that immediately tells the reader "yup, it finally happened".
  • In Ludwig Revolution, Rapunzel throws up in the morning and Dorothea immediately believes that she's pregnant and even lampshades how this is like a soap opera. Rapunzel is indeed pregnant by Prince Silvio.
  • Maken-ki!: Played for Laughs during Azuki's nightmare in episode 9 (season 2). She wakes up and finds herself naked in bed with Takaki, who blushes over Azuki being "her first". Takaki asks if they can do it again, but suddenly becomes nauseated and has to run to the bathroom. The scene immediately cuts to the delivery room at the hospital, where Takaki gives birth to their daughter, Yuuka. Azuki promptly wakes up screaming.
  • In Red River (1995), this is used thrice. First, Yuri has it when she's pregnant for the first time, but sadly she ends up losing the baby. Few later Yuri's Ninja Maid Shala also has it, but she lies about being seasick to not hurt Yuri's feelings over the aforementioned loss. And finally, Yuri again has it right before she and Kail get officially married, as she's pregnant again - this time, the baby is born safely.

    Comic Books 
  • Subverted with Buffy in issue 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 9. She throws up several times, and together with some cryptic comments thrown her way it's the reason she goes out to buy a pregnancy test — which turns out positive. A few issues later it turns out she's actually a robot, and all symptoms are directly caused by this. The morning sickness for one is due to her artificial body's inability to process food.
  • A Jack Chick tract has a woman getting pregnant, introduced after she throws up several times during the day.
  • Concrete The Human Dilemma: a girl Larry impregnated suffers from it. So does Concrete, though naturally no one suspects he's pregnant, as he's a man trapped in an alien body they had no reason to believe could reproduce at all, much less asexually, and even less reason to believe would experience similar pregnancy symptoms to humans.
  • Comes up in Injustice: Gods Among Us when Black Canary calls a halt in the middle of a fight with Harley Quinn so she can throw up in a nearby bucket. Harley immediately recognizes it as morning sickness and starts teasing Dinah about it, and turns out she realizes what it was because she had a daughter five years ago.
  • In the Warrior Cats graphic novel A Thief in ThunderClan, this is how Brightheart learns she's pregnant; she feels sick while about to eat breakfast, so she visits the medicine den and Cinderpelt tells her she's going to have kits.

    Comic Strips 
  • Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin's mother once catches a virus and throws up several times. Calvin asks his parents if his mother is pregnant, but his father says that if she were, she'd look like "a hippopotamus with a gland problem", which offends the mother.
  • In Retail, Marla's morning sickness was so bad she actually called off of work, which she never does. This worries Stuart, who doesn't know she's pregnant yet, and he starts thinking she's looking for another job and planning on quitting Grumbel's right before the holiday season.
  • Notably averted during Rosalind's pregnancy in Safe Havens, unlike the pregnancies of Jenny, Ming, and Thomas, she's turned into so many species thanks to Samantha's research that her body is used to new hormones being introduced so she doesn't experience morning sickness.
    • Should be noted, this is how Jenny finds out she's pregnant. Ming found out long before she started having morning sickness (and started trying to figure out which foods would make the most colorful barf) and Remora had to tell them about Thomas, cause...well, they didn't know it was the males that got pregnant when merpeople are involved.
    • And this is how they figure out Samantha is pregnant too. Probably a good thing they employed the Vomit Discretion Shot, cause at this point she and everyone else were in space. (The embarrassing part is that it's Dethany, who's still on Earth, who figures it out first.)

    Fan Works 
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation fanfic Consequences of Bathtubs, Deanna Troi has such severe morning sickness that she can't keep her food down, which proves to be unhealthy for the baby and she has a miscarriage.
  • A Crown of Stars: In chapter 66 Asuka's stomach has been bothering her off and on for a few days. She thinks nothing of it until she hears a character telling another: "It's not right, you being so chipper and bushy-tailed every morning. Sickness, that's what it is. I think you're..." And she blanches when she thinks about her stomach aches, realizes that Shinji and she have been screwing up like bunnies every night for nearly two months without protection -the thought of using it never entered their minds- and she cannot remember when her last period was. She dashes towards the nearest toilet to vomit.
  • The Child of Love: Subverted. Asuka suffered from morning sickness, but the readers learnt from her pregnancy before seeing her sick. Likewise, she was constantly sick and throwing up for most of her pregnancy, but it was a hint something wrong was happening to her and her baby.
  • Ghosts of Evangelion: Shinji insisted that Asuka saw a doctor after she was sick three mornings in a row. He was sure that she was pregnant. And he was right.
    Asuka: I'm pregnant.
    Shinji: I wondered.
    Asuka: What? Why didn't you say anything?
    Shinji: You can't be serious.
    Asuka: Well, yes, I guess I can see your point.
    Shinji: But anyway, you were sick three mornings in a row. What else could it be?
  • In the Danny Phantom fanfic Ghosts in the Closet, this is the first sign that Sam's pregnant. Well, for her at least - the readers already know.
  • It's a recurring thing in the third arc of the Elemental Chess Trilogy, and actually becomes a plot point when it saves the life of the father-to-be (It Makes Sense in Context).
  • In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "The Birth Of Psycheliana", when Smurfette goes through morning sickness during her pregnancy with Empath's child, Empath also goes through the same thing himself, as there is a psychic link between himself and his child (who turns out to be a telepath herself). Papa Smurf gives Smurfette medicine to help her deal with the sickness, while Empath is told he would need to block it out of his mind in order for him to be strong for his wife during her pregnancy.
  • In the Star Trek: Enterprise fanfic Enterprise Enquirer, Hoshi keeps vomiting, which is actually due to eating a contaminated peach, but Trip and Travis prank Malcolm by telling him that she's pregnant.
  • In Face The Strange, Dally gets morning sickness...soon before she gives birth.
  • Hero's two wives go through this in their separate pregnancies with his two children in the Hero: The Guardian Smurf series.
  • The Discworld fic Hyperemesis Gravidarum is named after the Latin term for this phenomena. This is the first sign three Lady Assassins get that they are very soon to take maternity leave.
  • Love Can Surprise You At Any Time In Your Life: Leela suffers nausea early in her pregnancy, but attributes her sickness to grief or a bug she picked up from living with her sewer mutant parents for a few weeks. After she throws up in his ancestral pond, Kif is the first person to suggest Leela's pregnant, as he apparently had similar symptoms during his pregnancy. Her nausea repeatedly appears for the next several chapters, to the point she gets suspicious and assumes the worst when Yivo temporarily cures it.
  • In Lullabies and Fairy Tales, Raven's first sign of being pregnant with Yang was morning sickness.
  • In Mended, Samuel initially mistakes Delia's morning sickness for cancer. He lost his wife to cancer a year prior and Delia's vomiting reminds him of it. Fortunately, Delia is only pregnant, not ill.=
  • In Morticia Is Pregnant, Morticia Addams from The Addams Family becomes pregnant with Pugsley and the first symptom is nausea and vomiting.
  • RE-TAKE: In the second volume Asuka goes to the toilet and throws up. As she washes her face she thinks it was her idea and now she must face the consequences. A few scenes later, she tells Shinji she is pregnant.
  • Sarada initially mistakes her mother's morning sickness for illness in Unplanned.
  • Mentioned but not seen in Life is a Roller Coaster when the school goes to an amusement park; the expectant mother finally breaks down and explains that this is the reason she's avoiding the spinny rides - she's been having morning sickness and she doesn't want to make it worse. She also notes that this is not the way she intended to announce the pregnancy to anyone.
  • Throughout her first trimester in The Test, Lilly suffers from morning sickness.
  • Played for drama in the Rugrats fanfiction Tommy Pickles: The Terrible Twos, where Aunt Elaine is pregnant with a little boy named Malcolm, but the babies mistake her morning sickness for attempts to throw up the baby, so they press down on her stomach, which ends up breaking her placenta and killing "Malcolm".
  • Us and Them has a downplayed example; the first indication Aeris is pregnant is when she starts waking up with headaches.
  • Queens of Mewni: Mentioned every so often in various biographies as a sign that the queen had conceived her heir, along with cramps. Notably, it's realizing the nausea she's feeling is morning sickness is what stopped Febe the Red One from committing suicide after the death of her husband.
  • This Total Drama Scarlett x Max fanart has Scarlett suffer nausea, which Max refers to as "tummy wonkies" (an allusion to a line he says in the show). Max suggests she might be pregnant, which Scarlett refuses to believe (their previous children in this AU were biologically engineered). Cue many, many positive pregnancy tests and a Big "NO!".
  • A Thing of Vikings: Heidrun throws up or feels nauseous several times in the chapters leading up to when she realizes she's pregnant.

    Film — Animation 
  • While she never threw up, Mrs. Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox did feel unwell and go to the doctor at the beginning of the movie. Mr. Fox thought it was food poisoning and she thought it was a twenty-four hour bug, but it turned out to be because she was pregnant. Notably, even after going to the doctor, she lied and kept pretending it was a bug, supposedly planning on letting him know later.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Selina Kyle during her return to Shreck's boardroom in Batman Returns brings up the subject of a nun during her childhood puking in church, and one of her friends blaming it on morning sickness.
  • Implied in Burlesque. Tess finds one of the dancers in the bathroom stall throwing up. She tells her, "Please don't tell me you have the flu." The dancer gives Tess a meaningful look, after which Tess says, "Please tell me you have the flu."
  • In Castle of Sand Rieko gets up from bed, darts into the bedroom, and vomits. Cut to her callous boyfriend demanding she get an abortion.
  • In Dawn of the Dead (1978), Francine is pregnant throughout the film, noticeably showing by the end. When the group first reaches the mall, Peter notices she looks sick and Stephen reveals her condition. Later, she is puking into a toilet and asks Stephen to leave her alone, not wanting him to see her like that.
  • Pregnant police chief Marge in Fargo says it's just morning sickness after inspecting a murder scene and almost throwing up.
  • Freshman Year: The first clue that Marcella's pregnant comes from her rushing to throw up in the bathroom.
  • In The Housemaid (1960), the housemaid barfs in the kitchen sink, revealing that she is pregnant.
  • Dr. Alex Hesse (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) in Junior suffers from morning sickness because he is pregnant.
  • In the film Knocked Up, the vomiting happens while the female lead is conducting an interview with James Franco, who assumes it's a prank.
  • Happens to Vaidehi in the film Lajja.
  • In Look Who's Talking, Mollie throws up at work and blames it on a stomach bug. Later, she finds out she's pregnant with Mikey.
  • Played with in The Painted Veil - which is set during a cholera epidemic. Kitty throws up, panics, and faints - and, coming to, asks "Am I going to die?" Apparently not...
  • In Seed of Chucky, Jennifer Tilly goes through this after becoming the unwitting carrier of Chucky's rapidly aging offspring.
  • In Sweet Country, the first hint that Lizzie is pregnant is when she throws up.
  • Threads has a scene where the nearly three months pregnant Ruth is feeling sick in the morning, though it's unclear if it's morning sickness, anxiety over the dangerous international situation (which leads to an all-out nuclear war that very day) or a combination of both. Either way, she's feeling so out of it that her mother goes to phone Ruth's place of work to let them know Ruth won't be in, only to find that all non-essential phones have been disconnected.
  • Where Are My Children?: Well, you couldn't show someone vomiting in 1916. So the film shows Lillian looking ill and refusing all food at the breakfast table.
  • Women Is Losers: Celina is revealed to be pregnant when she vomits violently into the toilet.
  • In Yours, Mine, and Ours, a reference to this is how one of the older boys finds out his mother is pregnant:
    Doctor: How are things going? Discomfort, morning sickness?
    Boy: No, Doc, I'm fine.
    Doctor: I meant your mother.
    Boy: Why would she... morning sickness?
  • When Lou Ann throws up in the club in Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, everyone freaks; thinking that she has been infected with the zombie plague. Actually, it turns out she's pregnant. One of the men even delivers the "But it's not morning" line.

    Literature 
  • The first sign of Batiya's pregnancy in Across a Jade Sea is severe nausea, but since she was traveling on a boat at the time she attributes it to seasickness at first.
  • Used throughout The Belgariad and sequels as the definitive way to signal a character is pregnant.
  • The Chronicles of Dorsa: Tasia at first just seems seasick in book three, but then it's revealed she's pregnant too (with her seasickness probably exacerbated by this).
  • In The Destroyer, one of the villains "knows" that they've succeeded in having Remo impregnate them when they start having trouble keeping down their food seven days after having had sex.
  • Earth's Children: In Clan of the Cave Bear, Ayla starts suffering bouts of sickness after she is repeatedly raped by Broud. She thinks it's because she hates what Broud is doing to her, but Iza realises that she's actually pregnant, even though it was thought Ayla couldn't conceive because her Cave Lion totem is so strong.
  • Robert A. Heinlein's novel Friday. While on the starship Forward, Friday suffers from nausea. When she goes to the ship's doctor he insists on checking her for pregnancy before prescribing her an anti-nausea pill (c.f. Thalidomide), despite her protests that she hasn't had sex for a long while. The test comes back positive, much to her astonishment.
  • Two characters in The General Series, Whitehall's wife Suzette and 'Barbarian' princess Marie Welf, are warned of inconvenient pregnancies by morning sickness.
  • In the book Gone with the Wind, Scarlett consults the family doctor about "a digestive upset", and is told that she is again pregnant. How a physician in the late 1860s could be so sure of this — without, apparently, even the formality of an examination — is never explained.
  • Honor Harrington's pregnancy is first hinted at when she feels slightly queasy at breakfast. Given her usual Big Eater tendencies, this stands out immediately.
  • One of the first Mister Seahorse patients seen by the doctor in the Anne McCaffrey short story "A Horse From a Different Sea" is known for a) adultery and b) getting sympathetic morning sickness whenever his wife is pregnant, to the extent that when she learns she isn't (before they realise he is) she suspects his morning sickness might be in sympathy with someone else.
  • How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: In volume 7, after returning from the Star Dragon Mountain Range in a gondola carried by Ruby, Liscia is not feeling well. Initially everyone attributes it to motion sickness, and she stays home when Souma goes on to visit the Republic of Turgis. However, since she and Souma have been regularly sleeping together since volume 5, a couple chapters later they receive a letter from her confirming that she's pregnant with their first child (much to the relief of the royal court).
  • In Ice, Cassie experiences this. She initially chalks it up to food poisoning or illness, because she'd been taking birth control pills. When she finds out that her husband magically negated the pills, she was not happy.
  • Kris Longknife: Unrelenting opens with Kris having trouble keeping her food down. She's astonished to learn she's pregnant since she just had her contraceptive implant replaced... until it turns out a disgruntled supply noncom switched a shipment of implants for ones that were expired. Over seventy women in Kris's command were similarly surprised as a result.
  • Little House on the Prairie: In The First Four Years, Laura appears to suffer from hyperemesis gravidarum during her pregnancy with Rose, as it's mentioned that she "had not had much to live on" due to barely being able to keep any food down.
  • In Thrones, Dominations of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, Harriet vomits several times earlier throughout the book, foreshadowing that she's pregnant with their first child, Bredon.
  • In the novel The Microcolony by Gordon Williams, morning sickness was the first sign one of the micro-clone colonists was pregnant; something they didn't think was possible.
  • In Millicent Min, Girl Genius, the title character overhears her mother throwing up in the bathroom in the mornings. Being the girl genius of the title, with a superb memory and problem-solving skills above her peers, she carefully deduces beyond the shadow of a doubt... that her mother has terminal brain cancer.
  • The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger: In the second book, Alexia Tarabotti gets nauseated on a zeppelin. Naturally, it's later revealed that she's pregnant.
  • Ramona Quimby: Zigzagged in "Ramona Forever". Beezus suspects Mrs. Quimby of being pregnant because the latter had thrown up, but Ramona points out that that's not the only reason to throw up. As it turns out, however, Mrs. Quimby is pregnant.
  • In The Red Tent, none of the women in Dinah's family experience morning sickness during any of their pregnancies. In fact, they just know they're pregnant even before missing a period because (In-Universe) Women Are Wiser and have intuition that the men in the series just don't. note  That being said, as a midwife, Dinah mentions offering an herb in the mint family to women who do experience morning sickness.
  • Tales of Kolmar: Lanen in The Lesser Kindred. It's particularly bad because half-dragon embryos are very hard on the human body.
  • In the Temeraire novel Empire of Ivory, Captain Harcourt vomits several times before revealing she is pregnant, and continues to experience bad sickness throughout the pregnancy.
  • Twilight, when Bella is on her honeymoon, about a day after her first day of sex. Of course, it's a mutant baby growing ridiculously fast...
  • An attack of vomiting is what makes Anna realize she is pregnant in Jean Rhys' Voyage in the Dark.
  • Averted in The Wheel of Time, where apparently one of the perks of being able to channel the One Power is not getting morning sickness when pregnant. Holding the Power also calms mood swings, though it can't be held indefinitely. Elayne finds out about her pregnancy because a future-seeing friend tells her about it, and doesn't develop any symptoms for several weeks.
  • Who Is The Prey:
    • The first hint that the readers get that He Yan is pregnant with Yuan Ze's baby is seeing her after having thrown up.
    • Fu Shenxing figures it out after he serves her mutton, which makes her nauseated to the point of vomiting.
  • WIEDERGEBURT: Legend of the Reincarnated Warrior: In the Flashback B-Plot to the Bad Future, Kari has to make a sudden run for the bathroom in the middle of a sect staff meeting, leading to The Reveal that she's become pregnant after having stopped using her Fantasy Contraception a couple months ago because she wanted a baby. This briefly annoys her partner Eryk, who hadn't wanted a baby yet, but he gets over it pretty quickly.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Penny suffers from this near the Grand Finale of The Big Bang Theory, though in this case her pregnancy has already been officially confirmed. That being said, this happens in the hotel room where she and Leonard are staying, and their original plan of checking out later in the morning gets postponed after her fits of vomiting.
    Leonard: I guess we'll be staying.
  • Caprica-Sharon on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica throws up when Helo offers her some of their rations. Helo assumes she's having a reaction to the radiation lingering in the atmosphere after the Cylon attacks on the colonies but Sharon clearly knows that's not what's causing it.
  • In Bewitched, Samantha never had morning sickness while pregnant with Tabitha, but when Darrin was cursed to have the symptoms of pregnancy (including the growing belly despite no fetus actually being present), including morning sickness (although downplayed because he doesn't actually throw up).
  • Played with during the pregnancies on Charmed. Phoebe mentions that it should be called "Morning, Noon, and Night sickness," and feels awful (understandable, see below). Piper seems to play it more straight, being uncomfortable, but not quite as bad, except when she throws up in her mouth at the hospital. Other symptoms in the Charmed world include attacking people with flowers (Piper's half-angel baby didn't like violence) and turning fruit into raw meat (Phoebe was pregnant with a half-demon). Both of their later pregnancies were much more normal, though the comics imply that Phoebe is just sensitive to morning sickness in general.
  • Chernobyl: It's implied, but never actually confirmed, that this is why Lyudmilla Ignatenko was awake in the middle of the night when the reactor exploded. She's introduced leaving the bathroom after throwing up and several days later reveals to her husband that she's pregnant.
  • On the Clueless TV series, the main characters partner for a school project with a geeky girl who disappears into the bathroom several times to vomit. They actually assume she has an eating disorder and confront her about it, commenting that as much as she's throwing up she must either be purging or... oh. They go with her to buy a pregnancy test and sure enough, she is.
  • Criminal Minds: Downplayed, but present in Season 10. Kate, who is visibly pregnant, complains that the smell of pizza is making her sick, so JJ offers her crackers to ease her stomach. Later, Reid sees JJ idly eating the crackers herself and asks if he's getting another godson. It's the first indication for the audience that JJ's pregnant again (though she was already aware of it herself).
  • CSI: In "Primum Non Nocere", Grissom picks a suspect as being pregnant when she vomits at a crime scene. The suspect herself says that it is food poisoning, but Grissom points out that the window for food poisoning manifesting had passed.
  • The smell of leather car seats did this to Gaby on Desperate Housewives, causing her to upchuck on the upholstery and royally decrease the vehicle's resale value.
  • Doctor Who: In "The Impossible Astronaut", Amy is sick, leading her to say at the end "Doctor, I'm pregnant!" Later revealed to be an effect of the Silence. Which leads to Fridge Brilliance or Fridge Logic when it's revealed that the Amy we see is a plastic replica and the real (pregnant) one is somewhere else. The show is uncertain as to how long the season took and exactly when she had been kidnapped and replaced, but we do know that the replica body felt the contractions. Most likely the sickness was the same.
  • Ezel: The first sign Azad is pregnant comes when she runs upstairs to vomit during breakfast with Ali, who rather obviously assumes she thinks he's a bad cook.
    Ali: Azad, were the eggs really that bad!?
  • A French Village: Rita vomiting after eating eggs in the morning is the first sign she's pregnant.
  • Friends: While pregnant in season four, Phoebe gets out of taking Emily to the theatre because her morning sickness is at its worst in the evenings. In another episode, Joey compliments her "cool pregnant-lady glow" to try and cheer her up. Phoebe replies that the "glow" is actually just sweat from throwing up so often.
  • Gossip Girl had an episode dedicated to Blair's morning sickness. It was nowhere to be found in the previous episode and went away completely in the following.
  • House, being the jerk he is, once mocked Cuddy with "Feeling a little sick this morning?" when he suspected that she was pregnant.
  • How I Met Your Mother:
    • "Challenge Accepted" averted this by having Lily be suffering from food poisoning. Then the twist at the end was that she actually wasn't. She was pregnant.
    • "Daisy" reveals that Lily is pregnant via a flashback to her throwing up in the train bathroom and remarking, "Oh no."
  • Petra has terrible morning sickness in Jane the Virgin. At one point, she asks Jane how she coped with morning sickness...it turns out, Jane just didn't have any.
  • Delinda threw up on Danny in Las Vegas, then used the obligatory "happens all day" remark.
  • Noughts & Crosses: Sephy getting this in the season one finale reveals that she's pregnant (her mother said she'd been sick lately).
  • Pam on the American version of The Office (US) uses this to deliberately induce a Vomit Chain Reaction, to get back at her colleagues for not being sufficiently understanding of her sensitive condition.
  • In Season 1 of Orange Is the New Black, Daya vomits presumably because the entire cellblock has the flu. She later realizes she is pregnant, not sick.
  • Parks and Recreation: In "Flu Season 2," Leslie assumes she's been hit by the recent flu epidemic due to her nausea. When she goes to the pharmacy, the pharmacist notices she doesn't show any other signs of the flu, and directs her to take a pregnancy test instead. Sure enough, it's positive.
  • Dutch drama series Petticoat uses this one. Main character Patty is shown several times to feel nauseous and vomit, having been sleeping with her love interest for a while. It's played off as nervousness over auditioning for her singing career, but the audience and her childhood best friend know better than that.
  • In the Quantum Leap episode "8 1/2 Months", Sam experiences nausea and vomiting after leaping into a pregnant woman (although the host herself was far past the stage of pregnancy when morning sickness would be expected).
  • Reba: Cheyanne got morning sickness during her pregnancy, though it wasn't the first indicator for her or the audience. She complains that it comes any time of day. When Van (the father) brings her crackers and club soda to ease her stomach, she uses the bottle to smash the crackers, since her moodiness is winning out over her nausea at the time.
  • Played with in the Season 5 opener of Rizzoli & Isles. Jane is nauseated by the scent of the morgue because of her pregnancy. A few other things, including the smell of fish and kale, also make her sick.
  • In the 80s telenovela Rosa salvaje, Candida is very nauseous at dinner, which prompts her vile sister Dulcina to taunt her about possibly being pregnant. Candida denies it, of course, but later finds out she is pregnant.
  • The Sooty Show: When Soo pretended to be pregnant to prank Matthew, she claimed that she'd been feeling "a bit sick" in the morning.
  • In The Spanish Princess, the first sign that Rosa is pregnant is when she throws up.
  • The Stargate Atlantis episode "Be All My Sins Remember'd" starts with Ronon and John discussing how Teyla probably has the flu since she's been sick and looking "green". Later in the episode, she finally tells them she's three months pregnant. Different from most examples since Teyla found out she was pregnant before any external signs happened, but this was the first in-universe evidence for the characters, even though they didn't figure it out.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • This show reveals that Bajorans don't get morning sickness—instead, they have sneezing fits, usually five or more sneezes in rapid succession. They also get back cramps and foot inflammation.
    • After Sisko's wife Kasidy is revealed to be pregnant at the end of the series' penultimate episode, she's shown suffering this in the Grand Finale.
  • Played with in Superstore, when Amy vomits and instantly suspects she might be pregnant. She just has time to take a test (negative), and then everybody else in the store also starts throwing up. They've all got food poisoning.
  • Played with in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Sarah comes down with an illness and starts throwing up, which causes Cameron to suddenly ask, out of nowhere, if Sarah is pregnant.
    John: Why the hell would you even ask that?
    Cameron: Kacey vomited when she was pregnant. (to Sarah) You're vomiting. It's morning. That's when it happens.
  • Happens to Yokas in Third Watch. Her partner Boscoe even gets the obligatory line about it happening all day.
  • Alex Cahill of Walker, Texas Ranger suffers this all during the events of Season 9's "Desperate Measures", since she and the titular policeman are expecting their first child. It leads to this hilarious exchange at the end of the episode after Garrett Pope and his goons are locked up, and his ex-wife Lara (who escaped from prison and the Rangers had to track her down and reimprison her) has her appeals trial for his crime of killing his business partner, upon which she kisses Gage as thanks for helping her:
    Sydney: That sure looked like a lot more than a... a... thank-you kiss.
    Gage: Come on, Syd, I think that, uh, she was just-just very happy is all.
    Walker: Hey, everybody. Well, you look like you're feeling better. (kisses Alex)
    Alex: (sighing) You had to remind me. (runs off to throw up) You had to remind me!
    Trivette: Uh-oh!
    Gage: Whoa-oh-oh!
    Trivette: Sick again.
    Walker: Sydney, how long does this morning sickness go on, anyway?
    Sydney: How should I know?
    Gage: All I know is, I'm glad women have to go through it, and not us men.
    Walker: Boy, I second that. Whew!
    Sydney: Men are such wimps.
    (Beat)
    Walker, Gage and Trivette (talking over each other): Yeah, yeah, I guess we are. Yeah, she's right. Can't argue with that. She's right; yeah. Yeah.
    (the executive producers' names appear and the episode ends)
  • Pavetta on The Witcher (2019) randomly vomits right after Geralt claims the Law of Surprise in return for saving Duny's life, and it's taken as an immediate and irrefutable sign that she's knocked up.
  • In The X-Files Scully is shown only having very little morning sickness. The one time she does run for the bathroom, it's actually in the evening.
  • You Me Her:
    • Izzy believes her vomiting one morning is this, because her period is slightly late. It transpires she wasn't pregnant however.
    • Emma getting this is another sign she's pregnant.

    Theatre 
  • One of the first audience tells that Wendla is pregnant in Spring Awakening is when her mother asks the doctor if nausea is a symptom of anemia.
    Frau Bergman: SO, that's all it is, Doctor-anemia?
    Doctor von Brausepulver: C'est tout.
    Frau Bergman: And the nausea?
    Doctor von Brausepulver: Not uncommon.
  • In Waitress, the first sign that Jenna might be pregnant is when she quickly excuses herself to the restroom with a hand over her mouth after serving a patron at the pie shop.

    Video Games 
  • The Sims:
    • In The Sims 2, when a sim is pregnant, she will run to the bathroom sometime the day after she conceives, and throw up. Afterward, she will have a thought bubble over her head with a pacifier and a question mark, wondering if she's pregnant. (The player always knows that she is—a lullaby chime plays after the couple "woohoos" to let you know.) Sims 2 actually covers this semi-realistically; Sims can have morning sickness at any time of the day, and the severity of it varies from Sim to Sim. There are Sims who were only sick once, Sims who were sick several times in a row (resulting in a strange green gas coming from the toilet), Sims whose sickness waxed and waned, and Sims who simply felt nauseated.
    • The Sims 3 is similar, the mother-to-be will randomly get a "nauseous" moodlet (caused by "Unknown Circumstances"), and then usually throw up when the moodlet expires.
  • This appears in almost all Story of Seasons games. Either the female protagonist or the wife of the male protagonist will get an event where they faint or mention feeling ill. After visiting the doctor, they learn that they're pregnant.
  • In The Walking Dead, Christa experienced nausea when Lee dug up the dead dog, and she ended up vomiting. Lee also mentions she's been throwing up a lot. The fans of the game were unsure if she was pregnant or not, until "All that Remains" came out, when it showed her heavily pregnant arguing with Omid about baby names. There is a 16-month time skip after Omid's death, and it shows a no longer pregnant Christa with Clementine, but no baby. It can be assumed the baby did not survive birth, as Christa would likely be dead if she had miscarried.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Melody, this is the introduction to the narration of the title character's pregnancy in the Family Ending.

    Webcomics 
  • In the Arthur, King of Time and Space contemporary arc, Guenevere responds to Arthur's proposal by throwing up.
    Arthur: Is that a no?
    Guenevere: That's a "Yes, and before I start showing might be best".
  • In Breaking Cat News, Georgia experiences morning sickness while pregnant with her son, but since the cats are unfamiliar with human pregnancy, they assume she has a hairball.
  • In Candi, a storyline, starting here and continuing for the next four strips, lampshades this trope and reveals that Candi is lactose intolerant.
  • According to Ship of Count Your Sheep, Laurie learned she was pregnant with Katie by throwing up her lunch.
  • In Kevin & Kell, Fenton starts realizing that Lindesfarne's experiencing this after a New Year's Eve party when he remembers that she had been the designated driver.
    • But it was averted in the case of Leona. She did not experience any nausea before finding out she was pregnant with her and Carl's first child.
  • A Modest Destiny here (and the previous page).
  • Spoofed in this strip of Questionable Content.
  • Shortpacked!:
    • With Amber's pregnancy, Willis managed to avoid having the readers catch on right away by giving a plausible explanation (nasty old pizza boxes) for the first bout of nausea.
    • With Robin's pregnancy, due to her Super-Speed, she experiences pretty much an entire pregnancy's worth of morning sickness in one day. There was enough vomit to cause a tidal wave.
  • In Sore Thumbs, Harmony showed signs of pregnancy in this.
  • In S.S.D.D. an arc where Anne thought she might be pregnant started with her throwing up, after asking Richard if they were ever going to get married.

    Web Original 
  • Kontrola: Majka suffers this after getting pregnant. She runs off to vomit abruptly.
  • In TheOdd1sOut video "Peeing Yourself", James's pregnant teacher throws up in the trash bin, and James wonders why she doesn't just stay home if her morning sickness is that bad.
  • In chapters 20 and 21 of We're Alive, Lizzy has a tendency to start throwing up during stressful situations. She's revealed as pregnant in chapter 30.

    Western Animation 
  • Lana gets seasick (while in a submersible) in the season 4 finale of Archer. Sure enough, she's pregnant.
  • In one episode of Family Guy, used to depict how typically clueless and self-centered Peter is, he flashes back to "all the difficulties" he had when Lois was pregnant. Cue him slumped on the bed, watching TV, while Lois loudly throws up and cries in the adjoining bathroom. He looks irritated and turns the TV up.
  • Episode six of Moonbeam City reveals that Dazzle and Pizzaz had became pregnant during a weekend tryst, but that Pizzaz later lost the baby. Never told about the pregnancy, Dazzle is slapped incredibly hard by a heartbroken Pizzaz ("That's ENOUGH!!") when he unwittingly mentions her symptoms to everyone, musing "Maybe she was sick..."
  • A Funny Background Event in the Moral Orel episode "God's Chef" has all the neighborhood women experiencing morning sickness to show that Orel's mistaken belief that he's supposed to be God's chef caused him to impregnate the neighborhood women.
  • This happened in Rugrats when it's revealed Didi is pregnant with Dil. They initially thought it was seasickness because they were on a cruise, and didn't find out until they visited the ship's doctor.
  • The Simpsons: Marge's pregnancy tests in different episode flashbacks all tie into her having morning nausea.
    Homer: Back then, there was no way for me to know your mother was pregnant.
    [Gilligan Cut to Homer calmly walking to his bathroom, only to be forcefully pushed aside by Marge as she runs past; muffled vomiting sounds ensue]
    • One episode has a parody of Lady and the Tramp where Homer and Marge are dogs; the very next morning after their date, Marge almost throws up, and Homer realises what this means and runs away.
  • BoJack Horseman:
    • In "See Mr. Peanutbutter Run," Princess Carolyn suddenly throws up into a bucket after Judah brings up BoJack. She reveals some weeks later that she was pregnant, but ultimately had a miscarriage.
    • In "Time's Arrow," Beatrice ruins her budding romance with Corbin Creamerman when she throws up all over him during a stroll in the park. This reveals that she's pregnant from her one-night stand with Butterscotch Horseman at her debutante ball, which prompts her to track Butterscotch down and enter a toxic marriage with him.


 
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Queen Victoria feels bilious.

Queen Victoria is listening to a chamber orchestra concert when she suddenly has to get up and leave due to morning sickness. Chef Francatelli prepares her hot cocoa as a home remedy.

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Main / MorningSickness

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