But I Can't Be Pregnant: Difference between revisions

** Murphy Brown does it both ways: she thinks her pregnancy is menopause, then when she does go through menopause she thinks she's pregnant.

** An episode of ''[[Sisters]]'' had oldest sister Alex thinking she was pregnant because her period was late and that "the last time that happened, we named her (her daughter) Reed!." Of course, it turned out to be menopause.

* Season two of ''Too Close For Comfort'' focused on Muriel's pregnancy, Henry and Muriel having been established as in their late 40s/early 50s, with two adult children already.

* Soap opera example: ''[[All My Children]]'''s Opal Gardner (who'd already had three adult children) found herself pregnant (after, of course, thinking she was starting menopause) by new husband (and resident Scrooge) Palmer Cortlandt. Palmer immediately accused her of infidelity because he'd been rendered sterile years ago "by a polo accident." Medical tests later proved that his plumbing still worked.

* A different take on it occurred in ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'', when Xena was rather shocked to be pregnant - she hadn't had sex ([[Les Yay|with a man]]) in ''ages''.

* The Korean couple (Jin and Sun) in ''[[Lost]]''. Jin was sterile before he came to the island, which causes Sun to believe the baby was conceived during her extramarital affair before the plane crash. However, Juliet explains that male sperm count is five times normal on the island, and a sonogram shows that the baby was indeed conceived on the island.

* Scully in ''[[The X-Files]]'' got pregnant about four seasons after being diagnosed as infertile. Interestingly, the actress' real-life pregnancy had taken place, and been somewhat clumsily covered with big coats, sitting at desks, etc. about two years before the character was supposedly rendered infertile.

* Inverted in ''[[Friends]]'': Courteney Cox and her husband were trying for a baby, so her character Monica and her husband Chandler started trying for one too. When Cox and David Arquette started having fertility problems, Monica and Chandler started having them too. Ironically, Cox became pregnant in the final season, when Monica and Chandler had already agreed to adopt. Lots of baggy tops towards the end of season 10.

** Played with in the episode "Joy to the World," where a woman is pregnant even though she and her fiance are waiting till marriage, and she swears she hasn't cheated. A skeptical House runs a DNA test and returns dumbfounded to tell them that there actually is no father, and the woman is the first ever case of human parthogenesis, an incredible phenomenon... except she's not, she just cheated on her fiance, and he's lying so that they'll be bowled over with elation and gratitude and get him a Christmas present, which he bet Wilson he could get a patient to do.

** Another episode includes a woman who miscarried a baby, but claimed she couldn't have been pregnant as she hadn't had sex in over a year. Turns out {{spoiler|she'd unknowingly been sleepwalking and having sex with her ex who lived in the same apartment building}}.

* Maude in ''[[Maude]]'' became unexpectedly pregnant at 47 while taking birth control, and later had the very first sitcom abortion.

* Claudia Black, who played Vala Mal Doran on ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', got pregnant with her first child shortly into fliming for the ninth season. She was reportedly worried about being taken off the show or ruining the plot.. fortunately the creators were already planning a storyline involving her being pregnant. As a result, Vala ended up lost in the Ori's home galaxy for much of Season 9, and when she came back in the last few episodes, was revealed {{spoiler|to be pregnant with a [[Dark Messiah|child conceived by the Ori]] so as to [[Batman Gambit|get around the rules barring them from interfering with an Ancient-protected galaxy.]] }}

* In ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' Lister sees his future self with twin babies. The question is raised of how this could be possible without a woman on board, and he says it will be fun finding out. {{spoiler|It is certainly fun, but not for him - to Rimmer's delight, [[Mister Seahorse|Lister gets pregnant]] by his parallel universe self and has to give birth to the twins, conveniently between series 2 and 3.}}

* ''[[Coupling]]'' had a pregnancy scare storyline at the end of season 3 - Sally is the one who believes she's at risk and asks the other girls to take a test as well as a control group. She then gets the tests mixed up, so when she finds out one of them is positive, she realises it can be any of them. While they're waiting to go back and buy more tests, {{spoiler|Susan}} reveals that she just found out she's infertile. Towards the end, {{spoiler|Jane}}'s test comes back negative, which results in {{spoiler|Sally}} assuming it's her, and becoming deeply unhappy since it probably wrecks her chances with {{spoiler|Patrick}}. And then {{spoiler|Susan}} walks in with a positive test.

{{quote|'''Neil''': But that's impossible!

'''Vyvyan''': Yeah, that's what ''she'' said! You just can't trust women, can you? }}

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]] adventure ''Rage Across the Heavens'' largely revolves around a werewolf cub born of two supposedly infertile Metis werewolves (the parents are both offspring of two werewolves, rather than one werewolf and either a human or a wolf).

** Normally, [[Promethean: The Created|Prometheans]] are infertile until they finally become human, but one very rare possibility is that they manage to have a baby of their own, whether with a human or another Promethean. The kids turn out both mortal and normal... except that they can sense Azoth and are completely immune to [[Hate Plague|Disquiet]].

 

== Real Life ==

** A ridiculous example was this teenage girl who brought this guy onto the [[Sally Jesse Raphael]] show because she was ''convinced'' he was the father, because apparently he was the only guy she'd slept with. He was relieved when it turned out not to be his child, but she was still really confused. Turns out that she'd been regularly sleeping with her step-brother, and she was under the impression that she couldn't get pregnant by him. He was the father, of course.

* Subverted in the Strikeforce Mixed Martial Arts promotion before the highly-publicized August 2009 fight between Gina "Conviction" Carano and Christine "Cyborg" Santos to crown American MMA's first female 145-lb champion. Santos' management called Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker the day before the fight and told him that the California State Athletic Comission had just informed them that Santos was pregnant and wouldn't be allowed to fight. They called back a few minutes later and informed a panicking Coker that it was just a joke.

** There are also cases where a couple fails to conceive despite fertility treatments, but end up pregnant soon after "giving up". It is said that stress can be a factor to infertility some times, and "trying" to conceive may make matters worse.

* [http://notalwaysright.com/a-strong-case-for-reproductive-licensing/19 Denial] is a big issue for some featured on [[(The Customer is) Not Always Right]].

** There was a similar example in the summer of 1997 in New Jersey, where a young woman named Melissa Drexler, dubbed "The Prom Mom" slipped out of her prom, gave birth in the bathroom, strangled the baby and left his body in the garbage, then returned to the prom to eat and dance. No one ever remembered her even looking as though she were pregnant, not even a girlfriend who had been trying on dresses with her only weeks before. It's believed that fear of her parents' anger led her to be in denial over her pregnancy.

* There was a documentary on women having affairs on Discovery Health Channel which had an Asian couple who had trouble having children. Eventually, she got pregnant. Unfortunately, she neglected to tell her husband that it was another man's child. [[Chocolate Baby|He found out when she had an African-American baby.]]