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{{trope}}
A subtrope of [[Dawson Casting]], one specifically about newborns, or at least TV "newborns". Whenever a supposedly just-born child appears on TV, the baby you will see will actually be several months old. Put this down to a mixture of simple ethics, employment laws, and casting laws that make it unacceptable to cast a real newborn in such a role. This is because sound stages are hot, bright, stuffy, dirty
This can have an unfortunate side effect, due to the fact that [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], making a person's first encounter with a real newborn possibly [[
This can even carry over to newborn animal babies, who fiction likes to depict as [[Ridiculously Cute Critter|the cutest, smallest things]] ever to arrive, when in actuality most newborn animals arrive slimy, hairless, and often [[Eyeless Face|eyeless]] because their eyes may be covered by a layer of skin that takes some time to wither away. Take a look [https://web.archive.org/web/20140506210437/http://www.orcca.on.ca/~elena/useful/new_born_rabbit.jpg at a newborn rabbit], and you'll think your bunny just gave birth to a dumpling.
In fiction, birth is a much cleaner, nicer ([[Screaming Birth|but still painful for the mother]]) process, and in American films and TV shows usually happens in a tent. The four-month-old tot pops out of his/her Mommy as clean as whistle and is bundled up.
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{{examples}}
== Film ==
* [[Aversion]]: ''[[Children of Men]]'' used a CGI baby in the birth scene.
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* Taken to its most insane in Rudy Ray Moore's ''Petey Wheatstraw, the Devils' Son-in-Law'', where the titular character emerges from the womb looking about twelve years old and ''wearing a diaper''! He then attacks his doctor.
* ''[[The Nativity Story]]'' is odd in the fact that while the baby playing Jesus could maybe pass for newborn, the baby John the Baptist comes out of the womb looking as if it's already attending preschool. The contrast between them makes the problem much worse than if they had used two older babies.
* Total [[Aversion]] in the film ''Window Water Baby Moving'' by Stan Brakhage, in which Brakhage actually films his own wife in the few days before giving birth, as well as the filming during the birthing process... from up close. The fact that the film that there is no music or dialogue only highlights the intense (and [[
* Spike Lee's ''[[She Hate Me]]'' averted this in a rather traumatizing fashion. Not one, but two births were actually filmed and used in the movie. Pretty squicky stuff, especially since you expect the standard "mother screaming/cut to clean, swaddled child." Nope. You get two real kids popping out of real mothers right before your very eyes.
* Likewise, the crew of ''[[Caligula]]'' kept a number of expectant mothers on set in order to capture a real birth for Caligula's child. When one of the women went into labor, she was immediately rushed onto the set and filmed.
* In the TV movie ''Million Dollar Babies,'' about the Dionne quintuplets, the producers used
* ''[[Junior]]'' has [[It Makes Sense in Context|Arnold Schwarzenegger give birth]] and like [[George Lopez]] they CGI his adult face onto a CGI baby... It's [[Nightmare Fuel]] for everyone, including Arnold, which is fair, as it is a nightmare in the film.
* The French film ''Romance'' has what appears to be an actual birth. Close-up of vagina and everything.
== Live-Action TV ==
* Aaron on ''[[
* [[Inversion]]: In a ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' flashback in season one, an eighteen-month-old Claire (an age when children are often walking and might even have a word or two in their vocabularies) was played by an eight-month-old baby.
** Could be justified, if Noah Bennett lied about her age to obscure the fact that Claire was obtained by theft, not private adoption.
* Both used and averted on ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'' in season four: Danielle's son was born with amniotic fluid and all and looked like the average newborn for quite a while afterward, but Susan's (month early) son was born perfectly clean and looked to be the average size of a four month old baby.
* Parodied on ''[[George Lopez]]''. Anytime a flashback occurs where George is an infant, it's an infant's body with George's head computer generated on.
* Similarly parodied in the ''[[
* Hera on ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* Averted on [[Star Trek:
* According to the [[All There in the Manual|companion book]], a half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian newborn was needed for an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'', so they got the guys who built [[
* Either TV Land or Nick-at-Nite once ran a commercial that lampshaded the entire TV-birth process, including this trope. It went something like this:
{{quote|
'''Mother:''' Well, when two TV characters love each other very much, generally in the third season, the woman wears a very special pillow on her tummy. For three to five episodes. The [[Panicky Expectant Father|man panics]], and the woman is rushed off to hair and makeup, so she can look fresh as a daisy. And voila -- four-month-old newborns! }}
* Not shown on camera, but a ''[[Law and Order]]'' about infanticidal teen parents averted the sanitized-birth elements of this trope, citing as evidence the gory mess (blood, amniotic fluid, infant feces) which the birth made of a hotel room.
* Averted in the [[X-Files]] episode "Existence", in which the baby that plays William was Jerry Shiban, the son of John Shiban, one of the producers of the show. He was about two weeks old when he appeared in that episode, though when William returned for the next season, a different baby was cast due to Jerry's difficult temperament. Also the reason why William goes from being a redhead in season 8 to a blonde in season 9.
* One ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' skit has the newborn baby played by [[Will Ferrell]].
* The first-season episode "Brief Candle" of ''[[Stargate SG
* In the fifth season premiere of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', the baby used to portray Teyla's newborn is about two weeks old. The commentary notes that they were counting down when the actual expectant mother would have her baby since it had to be at least 14 days old before they could use it in the scene.
* Little baby Jake in the ''[[
* Quite neatly averted in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "A Good Man Goes To War". Although it's the first time we see the baby, the previous episode ended just before the birth, and the opening scene [[Your Mileage May Vary|appears at first to be just-post-birth]], a throwaway line of dialogue near the beginning of the episode establishes that it's been a month since the baby was actually born, accounting for this trope.
== Literature ==
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* Inverted in the ''[[Vorkosigan Saga]]'', Bothari tries to pass the newborn Ivan Vorpatril as being a few months old, but the person he's trying to fool quickly figures out that the boy's stated age would be correct if he changed 'weeks' to 'hours'.
=== Periodicals ===
* ''[[The Onion]]'' satirized this with one of its headlines: "Woman on TV gives birth to four month old baby".
▲== Stand-Up Comedy ==
* On one of his comedy albums, [[Bill Cosby]] describes how unprepared he was for his newborn's appearance:
{{quote|
** Ironically, when he got [[The Cosby Show|his own sitcom]] in the Eighties, he played an obstetrician.
** [[Robin Williams]], in his concert at the Metropolitan Opera House, refers to his newborn son as "a little old man, dipped in 40-weight" (presumably, 40-weight motor oil).
== Other Media ==
* Quite common in paintings depicting Jesus's birth. This is an obvious case of [[Most Writers Are Male|All Painters Are Male]], though, and at the times most of these works were made even married men didn't spend very much time around small babies. Also, a lot of times the patrons would pay the artist specifically to make the baby Jesus resemble a family member, if not the patron himself.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Babies Babies Everywhere]]
[[Category:Characters and Casting]]▼
[[Category:Birth Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Characters and Casting]]
[[Category:Omnipresent Tropes]]
[[Category:
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