By Saloni Gajjar, Erik Adams, Monica Castillo, Jarrod Jones, Danette Chavez, Lacy Baugher Milas, William Hughes, Matt Schmikowitz. Clockwise from left: I Love Lucy (Screenshot: YouTube), St. Denis Medical (Photo: Greg Gayne/NBC), Friends (Screenshot: HBO Max), All In The Family (Screenshot: Prime Video)
Childbirth requires a gargantuan amount of energy and work—no wonder the physical process is dubbed “going into labor.” On TV, it pops up in various ways, whether in visceral horror stories, realistic medical dramas, or family sagas. Sitcoms usually present this serious life event with a touch of humor and sweetness, making it digestible for a mass audience. The evolution of how comedies present childbirth is also a marker of how times change, whether that change is driven by public perception, TV standards and practices, or just the dynamic nature of the genre itself. In the ’50s, the writers of I Love Lucy couldn’t use the word “pregnant,” but TV births became commonplace during the last three decades of the 21st century. Today, sitcoms hardly feature protagonists having children. To commemorate a holiday devoted to a different type of labor, here are 18 episodes that show how this stock storyline has been told over the years.
I Love Lucy, “Lucy Goes To The Hospital” (1953)
Lucille Ball was pregnant with her second child during I Love Lucy‘s second season, and while some advertisers objected to the star “being in the family way,” Ball’s husband and co-star Desi Arnaz insisted on including the couple’s big news in their show. When advertisers still balked at the term “pregnant,” the preferred word for Lucy Ricardo’s condition became “expecting.” While Ball may have spent a number of episodes in increasingly voluminous dresses and blouses and sometimes posed behind set furniture to hide her baby bump, the storyline’s big conclusion became one of the first major must-watch moments in early TV history—over 70% of American households with a TV tuned in. It was a history-making episode, and one perfectly aligned with the series’ sensibility: The chaos of getting Lucy to the hospital epitomizes I Love Lucy’s frantic brand of physical comedy. [Monica Castillo]
TheFlintstones, “The Blessed Event” (1963)
A decade later, TheFlintstones earned the distinction of being the first animated sitcom to pull off a pregnancy arc—it helped that the show was the first animated sitcom, period. “The Blessed Event” is a slight but no less form-defining moment not for the introduction of Pebbles Flintstone, but for being a clinic on how not to write a childbirth episode, with Fred Flintstone remaining the show’s focus even as his wife, Wilma, approaches her big moment. In fact, most of “The Blessed Event” features Barney Rubble mentally preparing the big lug for the imminent delivery of Flintstone #3. Still, Wilma’s delivery is a genuine turning point that signaled The Flintstones‘ growing appetite for a larger cast—for better or worse—and, for a time, more consequential themes, as seen with season four’s “Little Bamm-Bamm” and its allusions to the Rubbles’ difficulty conceiving a child of their own. [Jarrod Jones]
All In The Family, “Birth Of The Baby”(1975)
The bundle of storylines (and basis for “physically correct” tie-in merchandise) that came to be known as Joey Stivic served as a new bone of intergenerational contention between reactionary Archie Bunker and his liberal son-in-law, Mike “Meathead” Stivic. Three episodes after the Bunker family Thanksgiving blows up over the kid’s religious upbringing, Joey arrives at an ideally inopportune time: In the middle of a two-parter while his mother, Gloria, is stuck in a restaurant phone booth, and his grandfather is trying to wriggle his way out of The Royal Brotherhood Of The Kings Of Queens’ annual minstrel show. Arch is uncharacteristically on the right side of history here (albeit for the wrong reasons—he just doesn’t want to do the show), though his reluctance leads to the perfectly All In The Family image of TV’s favorite bigot showing up to the maternity ward in blackface. Once she’s out of the phonebooth and in labor for six hours, Gloria gets her chance to test primetime taboo, too, asking Mike, “Why did you do this to me?”—one of the first, if not the first, sitcom mom to hit a sitcom dad with that eventual chestnut. [EA]
Cheers, “The Stork Brings A Crane” (1989)
From the end of the decade that gave us Family Ties’ Elyse Keaton going into labor on-air during a public-TV pledge drive and the arrival of rapidly agingGrowing Pains sister Chrissy amid her brother Ben’s 12th birthday comes an episode that does so much of what we think of when we think of sitcom births. Leave it to the ’80s defining sitcom to really squeeze it all into “The Stork Brings A Crane”: The mother, Lilith, going into labor in loud and highly public fashion (during Cheers’ 100th-anniversary bash); the father, Frasier, storming into the bar to announce his car has been towed at the absolute worst possible time; Frasier and the Sternin-Cranes’ bartending buddy Sam serving as ad hoc midwives for a stranger who, unlike Lilith, is actually in labor. And then, to top it all off, Frederick Crane is born (offscreen) in a taxi without Dr. Crane present. It just goes to show that even at this late stage, Cheers could still deliver. [EA]
Murphy Brown, “Birth 101” (1992)
The only episode on the list to become a campaign trail talking point, “Birth 101” was the culmination of a fourth season in which Murphy Brown’s namesake TV reporter found herself unexpectedly pregnant, dismayed she’s carrying a boy, and feted with a baby shower attended by multiple real-life news personalities. It’s also uncommonly frank about all the unknowns and anxieties that can creep up on anyone in the post-delivery room—let alone an accomplished single mother who’d managed to kick addictions to everything but work and winds up spending the first few minutes of her son’s life frantically monologuing at him. Interrupted by her camcorder-toting co-worker Frank Fontana and a request for an impromptu video message to the newborn, Murphy turns to her higher power—Aretha Franklin—and sings a lullaby rendition of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” It’s an incredibly tender moment—and an utterly confounding one to commit political suicide over. (Then again, as Murphy pointed out over and over and over in the next season’s premiere, Dan Quayle never was the smartest potato in the field.) [EA]
The Simpsons, “And Maggie Makes Three” (1995)
Babies are usually a blessing in sitcom land, even if they often arrive in unusual or outrageous situations. The Simpsons had some fun with this TV building block in the flashbacks of “And Maggie Makes Three,” playing up the effects three unplanned pregnancies can have on someone as incapable of forethought as Homer Simpson. Thinking he’s achieved perfect balance in his life, Homer quits the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in spectacular fashion, literally burning a bridge as he heads to his dream job at the Bowlarama. But when he learns another bundle of d’oh is on the way, Homer has to beg for his job back, leaving him resentful in the delivery room (after being blithely unaware of Marge’s pregnancy). That bitterness melts away like synthetic fabric in acid rain the moment a newborn Maggie grabs his finger. Along with birthing the “Do It For Her” meme, this season six episode offered a hilarious, somewhat bracing look at a growing family’s growing pains. [Danette Chavez]
Friends, “The One With The Birth,” “The One Hundredth,” “The One Where Rachel Has A Baby,” and “The Last One, Part One,” (1995, 1998, 2002, and 2004)
Most sitcomsdepicted childbirth as a “close family only” situation, until multiple characters on Friends went into labor, usually surrounded by their closest pals—or, in the case of the show’s earliest birth, their ex’s BFFs. From its first season until its last, Friends wasn’t shy about throwing in pregnancy and baby storylines to depict how parenthood and its accompanying responsibilities affected the show’s six protagonists. Sometimes, it was a milestone on top of a milestone: Phoebe gave birth to the triplets she carried for her brother and sister-in-law in the 100th episode, while Emma’s arrival in the season-eight finale further shifted the dynamics of Ross and Rachel’s relationship. The Friends always were there for each other in the hospital, save for when Monica and Chandler’s twins were born, and through these episodes, the showcontinued to emphasize its core thesis: the value of found family, especially if or when blood relatives aren’t around to share some of life’s biggest moments. [Saloni Gajjar]
The Office, “The Delivery” (2010)
The will-they/won’t-they between Jim and Pam was so central to the The Office that by the time the couple had a baby in season six, it became the subject of a special, hour-long two-part episode. In the first half, Pam delays going to the hospital for insurance purposes, forcing everyone at Dunder Mifflin to come up with distractions from the pain of her contractions—The Office,in its own goofy way, tapping into serious healthcare concerns about going into labor. Eventually, Pam reveals that she’s anxious to take the next inevitable step: actually becoming a parent. In the second half, she and Jim learn the immediate challenges of the same when Pam has trouble breastfeeding baby Cecelia, partly due to her own exhaustion. It’s some emotionally raw material, but it’s also just nice of The Office—and its fictional documentary crew—to take a break from the workplace and give us a peek into Jim and Pam’s first days as a mom and dad. [SG]
Community, “Applied Anthropology And Culinary Arts”(2011)
Dan Harmon’s comedy about an offbeat gang of community college students loved nothing so much as poking fun at established sitcom tropes and themes—so of course it has a childbirth episode. Community’s take on the traditional TV birth plan sees Shirley give birth in the middle of the gang’s anthropology final, and hits plenty of Abed-approved beats, like the study group coming together in a friend’s moment of need and the process of birth neatly wrapping up in 25 minutes or less. But because this is also an episode that lets some of the show’s more under-appreciated characters shine (particularly Ken Jeong’s Ben Chang), it’s hard to be too mad about it. That and the fact that “Applied Anthropology And Culinary Arts” is also a hilariously satisfying callback to a previous season two episode, “The Psychology Of Letting Go,” in which Abed inexplicably delivers a child as part of a storyline that plays out entirely in the background of other scenes. [Lacy Baugher Milas]
Jane The Virgin, “Chapter Twenty-Two” (2015) and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, “Nathaniel Is Irrelevant” (2018)
Jane The Virgin wraps up its inventive artificial insemination premise when Jane gives birth to Mateo at the end of the show’s first season. In typical fashion, plenty of theatrics are involved, including false labor and the fact that Jane’s parents aren’t in town. It’s equally sweet and soapy, and far from The CW’s only comedy-drama to straddle that line, too—Crazy Ex-Girlfriend served up its own take on this approach when Heather goes into labor in season three. To assuage her, mother of two Paula sings Heather a song about the “hellride of your life,” describing the process of giving birth in vivid detail. Yet despite their respective telenovela and musical-comedy components, both “Chapter Twenty-Two” and “Nathaniel Is Irrelevant” mark these shows’ commitment to keeping their heightened depictions of life’s big moments grounded in an emotional and factual reality. (Maybe too factual, given the lyrics of Paula’s song.) [SG]
Superstore, “Delivery Day”(2018)
As with so much of Justin Spitzer’s consistently underrated NBC comedy, there’s a raging heart of class consciousness running beneath the absurdity of Superstore‘s season-four double-birth episode. As Dina cruises through a surrogacy C-section at a hospital staffed by hunky doctors (courtesy of Cloud 9 management health insurance), floor supervisor Amy instead finds herself bounced to a local clinic, where she’s forced to give birth six feet from a corpse while her ex-husband and new boyfriend serve as makeshift stirrups. True to form, Superstore doesn’t let its fury at a basic injustice shafting millions by the day overwhelm either its heart or its dark wit—”Delivery Day” is still a great episode for both “aw”s and inventively mean-spirited gags. But it does remind viewers that even a birth can’t be a break from the real work a TV show is here to do. [William Hughes]
Human Resources, “Birth” (2022)
It only took 59 years and several overhauls of how and where most people watch their favorite shows to go from “you can’t say Lucy is pregnant on TV” to “you can show an animated, amniotic-fluid-slicked infant spilling out of a vagina on TV.” You can thank the Big Mouth spin-off Human Resources for the latter: The Netflix cartoon immediately doubled down on its parent (pun intended) series’ unapologetic and imaginative approach to human sexuality, treating viewers and newly assigned, shitfaced lovebug Emmy (Aidy Bryant as an antennaed manifestation of affection) to the miracle of birth in its very first episode. Big Mouth’s entire menagerie of physical and emotional abstracts made flesh-and-boners is at the bedside of Emmy’s client Becca, their presence making labor’s psychedelic swirl of feelings as explicit as the split-second view of the baby emerging from between Becca’s legs. [EA]
Young Sheldon, “A Launch Party And A Whole Human Being” (2023)
Perhaps it speaks to how most contemporary comedies have fewer episodes per season; focus on young, unattached characters; or don’t run long enough for those characters to get attached and have kids, but you’d need to look back to 2024—when an IVF storyline factored into the final season of Bob Hearts Abishola and the sixth season of The Neighborhood ended with a baby starting to make its way into the world during a Toni Braxton concert—for the last time anyone had a kid on a network sitcom. For a sitcom birth that recalls the event episodes of yore, you’d need to go back another year, when single-camera Big Bang Theory prequel Young Sheldon set up its own multi-cam spin-off, Georgie And Mandy’s First Marriage, with “A Launch Party And A Whole Human Being.” When she goes into labor while Sheldon prepares to launch the database he’s spent much of season six building, poor pregnant Mandy initially has to rely only on her famously germophobic future brother-in-law to drive her to the hospital—eventually taking matters into her own hands. Once there, tensions flare between the Cooper and McAllister families, as is normal in high-pressure situations, until Georgie kicks them out of the room for baby CeeCee’s arrival. [SG]
St. Denis Medical, “Here A Righteous Woman Comes” (2026)
There’s more talk of birth than actual birthing in St. Denis Medical‘s season two standout “Here A Righteous Woman Comes.” Set around the umbilical-cord-themed ribbon-cutting of her disastrously named “White Women’s Birthing Center,” modern Sisyphus Joyce Henderson does what she always does: Too much. She hires gospel singers, invites The New York Times, and when the birthing center’s maiden couple goes into labor early, she recruits Matt and Serena to fake a pregnancy. All these spinning plates were bound to come crashing down. They don’t; Joyce does, in an all-timer pratfall. Somehow, miraculously, the day gets even further away from Joyce after her concussion. Wendy McLendon-Covey gives a bravura performance “Here A Righteous Woman Comes” as a woman who doesn’t get enough credit. The same could be said for the actor, as well as billions more around the world whose labor goes unnoticed. That’s right, we’re talking about mothers. Happy Labor Day, moms. [Matt Schmikowitz]
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