Death by Childbirth/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A woman (usually cleanly and unrealistically) dies in childbirth

  • Straight: A woman dies in childbirth.
  • Exaggerated: Every woman who gives birth dies trying.
  • Justified:
    • The woman has a disease or a condition making it unlikely that she will survive childbirth.
    • The show is set in a time period before medicine and hygiene were sufficiently advanced to keep this sort of thing from happening.
    • Or after.
  • Inverted:
    • The woman lives, but the baby dies.
    • A zombie woman gives birth to a baby, and the woman comes back to life because of this.
  • Subverted: It looks like she's going to die (perhaps in a show where this sort of thing is common), but she pulls through.
  • Double Subverted: ...but then she gets septicemia and dies after the fact.
  • Parodied:
    • Having the baby causes Alice to split neatly in half, perhaps because the baby is gigantic.
    • The baby is a Chest Burster.
  • Deconstructed: The death is portrayed realistically, with days of agony, screaming, massive blood loss, etc... Worse, with such a high childbirth fatality rate, the local population starts to stagnate, with most women unable to birth more than one or two children without dying, and even more are discouraged from wanting children by it. The birth rate declines and the death rate remains the same.
  • Reconstructed:
    • The characters know what a Death by Childbirth is like, so they take steps to prepare for it, should it happen.
    • A school for midwives is opened in the area, training nurses in how to coax a mother through childbirth safely. The death rate in childbirth declines.
  • Zig Zagged: The woman is about to die. Miraculously, she lives! But then she gets septicemia and is dying... but then a mage heals her! But she dies anyway because the spell failed. Then somehow she gets brought back to life...
  • Averted: No mention is made of dying in childbirth and the birth itself goes normally.
  • Enforced: "This actress is quitting the show. Have her die in childbirth!"
  • Lampshaded: "Before you ask, reader, no, this heroine's mother did not die in childbirth, although I can see why you would assume that, given how often it happens."
  • Invoked:
    • A curse is put on Alice so she'll die in childbirth.
    • The baby is stuck and/or breech
  • Defied:
    • A blessing is put on Alice so she's temporarily immortal when she gives birth.
    • Alice's midwife knows how to do an episiotomy or C-section and even how to minimize the risk of infection, thus saving Alice.
  • Discussed: "We aren't living in the Middle Ages, after all. With our standards of hygiene, it's unlikely that Alice will die in childbirth."
  • Conversed: "Dying in childbirth? That's supposed to be really common in shows like this, isn't it?"

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