Basic Trope: A pregnancy that begins and ends very quickly.
- Straight: Alice sleeps with Bob, and three months later, she gives birth.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice's baby is born one week after she sleeps with Bob.
- Alice is pregnant for a total of two minutes.
- Downplayed: Alice's pregnancy lasts five to seven months.
- Justified:
- Alice is not human, and her species (whatever it may be) has a fast pregnancy.
- Alice's baby is born prematurely.
- Alice is carrying multiple babies simultaneously, a situation that often lends itself to pregnancies that are over in less than nine months.
- Inverted: Alice is pregnant for more than a year.
- Subverted:
- Alice's pregnancy takes the usual nine months in the series.
- Alice simply didn't notice her pregnancy until her third trimester, due to her portliness.
- Double Subverted: Nine months of "storyline time", that is. The episodes were filmed according to filming time, or made use of a flash forward.
- Parodied: Alice is visibly and heavily pregnant as soon as she's done having sex with Bob, and gives birth the morning after.
- Zig Zagged: Some pregnancies go rapidly, others slowly, and others at a realistic speed.
- Averted:
- Alice's pregnancy lasts for a normal amount of time.
- Alice does not become pregnant in-series.
- Enforced:
- "We need to portray a pregnancy without taking forever to film it."
- "The actress that plays Alice is pregnant, and we can't hide it at this point; let's make it part of the storyline."
- Lampshaded:
- "Didn't you just take a pregnancy test yesterday?"
- "The baby is approximately nine months early!"
- Invoked: Alice, frustrated with the uncomfortable aspects of pregnancy, seeks the help of a witch, who gives her a potion that will speed up her pregnancy.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz, needing a suitable heir before he dies, specifically impregnates Alice so he can influence his child.
- Defied: Alice has second thoughts about taking the potion, fearing that it could hurt the baby (or her), and decides just to suck it up and deal with her discomfort.
- Discussed: "It seems like just yesterday, Alice was just starting to show."
- Conversed: "That was just yesterday!"
- Implied:
- None of the characters ages appreciably during Alice's pregnancy.
- When other mothers ask how Alice handled her pregnancy, she actually seems confused before saying, "I regularly forget I was ever pregnant."
- Deconstructed: It destroys the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief; most people know that a pregnancy does not normally go that quickly. (If it does, chances are it's due to an abortion or miscarriage.)
- Reconstructed: The timeline makes it clear that it's a realistic amount of time.
- Played for Laughs: Gilligan Cut
- Played for Drama:
- The baby's early arrival causes problems and/or it doesn't survive.
- The baby in question is a Fetus Terrible that kills its own mother mere instants after being born.
You had the baby already? Didn't you just tell me about two weeks ago?