History Main / PillowPregnancy

* In the "Escape From Pain" episode of ''{{Trigun}},'' [[TwoMenOneDress Milly smuggles a teenage girl under her coat]]. Though the girl is pretty petite, and Milly rather tall, the resultant bulge is still large enough that she attracts curious scrutiny (including one old woman asking if she's expecting sextuplets), though she still manages to use this to fool the people chasing the girl she's hiding.

-->"Congratulations, you've given birth to a lovely fluffy cushion."

-->---''Series/{{Monk}}'', episode "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service"

* In ''GIJoeRenegades'', Scarlett--after a pair of failed {{Bavarian Fire Drill}}s--poses as a trailer-trash babymama to infiltrate a prison that Duke is in.

* In ''Garden of Shadows,'' the prequel to VCAndrews' ''Flowers in the Attic'' series, Olivia Foxworth must stuff her clothes with a progressively larger series of pillows to make it appear that she really is pregnant, so the servants don't realize that [[spoiler:the baby who is about to join the family is really the result of her husband Malcolm raping his stepmother]].
* Also done in ''Olivia'', where Olivia Logan (no relation to Olivia Foxworth) does this so that she can pass off her sister's illegitimate child as her own.

* A variant was also used in the TieInNovel ''Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu'', when Monk and Natalie go shopping at a department store in one scene and end up busting a shoplifting ring. Natalie has a small run-in with a pregnant woman who snatches a blouse she intended to get for Julie. The pregnant woman drops her purse and immediately walks off. Once the shoplifter with the oxygen tank is secured, one of the security guards asks Monk if there's anyone else they need to be aware of, and Monk mentions a pregnant woman who is not pregnant. Knowing that said woman is faking it, Natalie tackles her, causing her tummy pack to burst open, and she gets back the blouse she wanted. Natalie then asks Monk how he figured it out and Monk gives a SherlockScan explanation: the pregnant woman walked like a normal person, instead of waddling, and she bent over at the waist to pick up her purse.

* Subverted in the ''TheDrewCareyShow'' "What's Wrong With This Episode?", where Kate and Lewis both (supposedly) have a PillowPregnancy, but in reality Christa Miller is actually pregnant, and is pulling a HideYourPregnancy.

* A similar stunt was pulled on ''KateAndAllie'' in TheEighties, to hide Susan St. James' pregnancy by stuffing Jane Curtin to match in one episode. (They justified it by making it a flashback episode to when the title characters were pregnant with their daughters.)

* An episode of ''KenanAndKel'' has them attempt to speak to someone in a hospital. To get in they use this trope to [[ZanyScheme disguise Kel as a pregnant woman going into labor]]. This finally leads to the line:

* This occurs in an episode of ''OperationRepo'', in which a woman fakes being pregnant, even going so far as to fake going into labor, in order to keep her car from being repossessed. When her ruse was found out, the Repo team was not happy.

* Done in ''GoodLuckCharlie'' when Amy and Teddy go to a restaurant to get some salad dressing that supposedly induces labor (Amy was a few weeks late on her latest pregnancy). Teddy managed to sneak into the restaurant's kitchen and steal the dressing then tried to tuck it underneath her shirt as if she too was pregnant. Unfortunately one of the employees found her out straight away.

* On ''DaysOfOurLives'', Kristen padded her clothing after miscarrying John's baby, fearful that he would leave her otherwise.

* Julia Roberts' character in ''[[Film/OceansEleven Ocean's Twelve]]'' is coerced into doing this so she can pretend to be Julia Roberts...[[CelebrityParadox wait]]...
* AngelinaJolie does it in the movie ''Film/TakingLives'', though she uses a more convincing prosthetic to convince Ethan Hawke that she's eight months pregnant with his child, so that he'll think she's unable to fight back when he attacks her. [[spoiler:In the end, she shoots him dead, and then finally removes the prosthetic to show the audience that she had been faking her pregnancy for nine whole months, simply to bait him.]] This also creates an opportunity for a particularly disturbing KickTheDog moment on the part of Ethan Hawke's character, who [[spoiler:stabs her "pregnant" belly with a pair of scissors, evidently willing to kill her even though he believed her pregnant with his own twins...]]
* In the film ''The Cooler'', [[spoiler:Mikey and Charlene]] make use of this trope. They extract money from [[spoiler:Bernie]], and later [[spoiler:Charlene]] attempts to stop a fight by pretending to go into labor.
* The underrated LindsayLohan film ''Labor Pains'' features the main character doing this with one of her couch cushions, in front of a room full of baby shower guests who until that moment had thought she was genuinely pregnant.

* Briefly done for a gag in ''BrainDonors''. Literal ambulance chaser Roland T. Flakfizer arrives at the scene of a minor car accident and sees a woman passenger. He immediately sticks an instant-inflating pillow under her dress and starts loudly yelling about the liability costs.

* [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold Doll Tearsheet]] is accused of this in ''HenryIVPart2.'' Productions that don't cut the scene entirely sometimes imply that she is actually pregnant (after all, she is seen to be suffering from nausea in her first appearance).

* An early challenge on season 6 of ''ProjectRunway'' was to make a maternity outfit. However, instead of designing for real pregnant women, the designers designed for their regular models wearing a pillow. Some of them did ''not'' look convincingly pregnant.

* ''{{CSI NY}}'' did this with a shoplifter, who got the items out of the store by putting them inside her clothes and making herself look pregnant. Stella and Danny have a bit of fun with her, admiring how her ankles haven't swollen at all and how she's still able to wear heels. When Danny causes two stolen items fall out of her shirt by knocking on her stomach, Stella congratulates her on twins.

* ''Series/{{WhatWouldYouDo}}'' played with this scenario. Onlookers watch as a young woman buys a positive pregnancy test from a pregnant woman, and then uses it to pressure her boyfriend into marriage, saying how excited she is to start a family with him.

* Positive pregnancy tests are sold on eBay and Craigslist- an easy way for pregnant women to make money, and an easy way for a not-pregnant person to fool someone. For a while at least.

* High School Projects:

* Frances [=McDormand=] wore a pregnancy suit while shooting ''{{Film/Fargo}}'' because her character Marge was heavily pregnant, and remarked that the extra weight and bulk really helped her get into character. Ironically Frances actually ''did'' become pregnant in real life during filming, but it was early enough that it didn't affect her as much as Marge's did.

* On ''Series/{{Passions}}'', [[ManipulativeBitch Beth]] does a variation of this in [[TheBabyTrap an attempt to lure Luis away]] from Sheridan, who actually was pregnant (although in the latter's case, it was not known if either [[WhosYourDaddy he or his brother, Antonio, whom she was married to at the time, was the father of the unborn child.]]) What method did Beth end up using instead of a big, fluffy pillow? ''A bag of sugar,'' which at some point was even burst open ''[[OhCrap in the middle of a obstetrician's office.]]'' Oddly enough, although Luis was once concerned about why the baby wasn't kicking in her stomach when he placed his hand on her belly, [[WhatAnIdiot he never did find out that the pregnancy was fake.]]

* In ''ErrantStory'', Meji once sneaked out of a guarded city by pretending to be pregnant. Her 'belly', however, actually contained her snarky, flying cat familiar, Ellis. Meanwhile, Ian [[VoluntaryShapeshifting dressed]] like a priest and persuaded the guards to let her through, doing a cover-up.[[note]]Verancia is a ''very'' religious city. Ian heavily implied that there was no way of knowing who the child's father might be.[[/note]]

* In the ''Series/{{Monk}}'' episode "Mr. Monk Is At Your Service", to further a murder investigation, Natalie has to go to a party hosted by Paul Buchanan, who had stalked her in high school. To discourage Buchanan's attempted advances, she stuffs a pillow under her shirt and pretends to be pregnant. This example is one of WrittenInInfirmity as Traylor Howard was pregnant during filming of the episode, as seen by earlier scenes where the cameras are positioned so that she is standing behind an open car door, sitting down at a desk, etc, to hide her chest, both in this episode and in other episodes in this part of season 5. The PillowPregnancy hence averts the need for her to [[HideYourPregnancy hide her enlarged abdomen]].

* In the movie ''Young Doctors In Love'', a prostitute named Julie uses a balloon to fake her pregnancy (she was making HeelFaceTurn out of the business), but a Jerkass [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqMnsKAuMbc doctor pops it]] in a KickTheDog moment.

* in ''TheSureThing'', the risks of over-doing the fakery are lampshaded:

** Yet another advert had a couple getting intimate in a theatre. The woman cries out loudly enough to halt the play. The man balls a jacket underneath her dress, and by the time people get up there, makes out she's going into labour.

A form of ObfuscatingDisability. Compare FakeBoobs.