Express Delivery/Playing With


 * Basic Trope: A pregnancy that begins and ends very quickly.
 * Played Straight: Alice is pregnant at the start of one season of As The Earth Orbits, and gives birth next season.
 * Exaggerated: Alice's baby is born within the next couple of episodes.
 * Downplayed: Alice's pregnancy last 5-7 months.
 * Justified:
 * There is only so much time in which to portray events in a storyline.
 * The actress that plays Alice is pregnant, and so a storyline involving the pregnancy is shoehorned in.
 * Alice is not human, and her species (whatever it may be) has a fast pregnancy.
 * The storyline involves Alice having a miscarriage or abortion early in the pregnancy.
 * The timeline is personal rather than calender, so what was 2 months was actually 9 months gone by fast.
 * Inverted: Alice is pregnant for several seasons straight.
 * Subverted: Alice's pregnancy takes the usual 9 months in the series
 * Double Subverted: 9 months of "storyline time" that is. The episodes were filmed according to filming time, or made use of a flash forward.
 * Deconstructed: It destroys the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief; most people know that a pregnancy does not normally go that quickly. (If it does, chances are it's because of a miscarriage or abortion.)
 * Reconstructed: The timeline makes it clear that it's a realistic amount of time.
 * Parodied: Alice is visibly and heavily pregnant as soon as she's done having sex with Bob, and gives birth the morning after.
 * Zig Zagged: Some pregnancies go fast, others slow, and others at a realistic speed.
 * Lampshaded: "Didn't you just take a pregnancy test yesterday?"
 * Averted:
 * Alice's pregnancy lasts for a normal amount of time.
 * Alice's pregnancy is the Longest Pregnancy Ever
 * Alice does not become pregnant in-series.
 * Enforced:
 * "We need to portray a pregnancy without taking forever to film it."
 * "The actress that plays Alice is pregnant, and we can't hide it at this point; let's make it part of the storyline."
 * Invoked: Alice, frustrated with the uncomfortable aspects of pregnancy, seeks the help of a witch, who gives her a potion that will speed up her pregnancy.
 * Defied: Alice has second thoughts about taking the potion, fearing that it could hurt the baby (or her), and decides to just suck it up and deal with her discomfort.
 * Discussed: "It seems like just yesterday, Alice was just starting to show."
 * Conversed: "That was just yesterday!"
 * Played For Laughs: Gilligan Cut
 * Played For Drama: The baby's early arrival causes problems and/or it doesn't survive.

You had the baby already? Didn't you just tell me about two weeks ago?