Five Movies Featuring Pregnant Characters That I Love

Would you mess with a pregnant woman with this look in her eyes? Oh, hell no you wouldn’t. If you did, you would die. Vidya Balan as the pregnant Vidya Bagchi in the Indian thriller *Kahaani* (2012)

Seeing pregnant women portrayed in film and television usually makes me cringe. If the woman isn’t dying in childbirth, she’s having an evil baby, or maybe an alien baby. Pregnant women in film and television also have the tendency of having unbelievably fast labors, water that breaks in a dramatic gush, of being forced to give birth in cars or in stuck elevators, etc. It’s unrealistic, it’s frustrating, and it’s insulting.

Here are a few films involving pregnant characters that do not make me cringe, and are decent films to boot:

Fargo (1996) ~ Frances McDormand won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her turn as North Dakota police chief Marge Gunderson in the Coen brothers’ offbeat “homespun murder story.” Marge investigates a series of grizzly murders while smiling through a polite and bubbly “Minnesota nice” accent—and she happens to be quite obviously 7 months pregnant and not making a big deal about it. Just a pregnant woman doing her job, being police chief, catching serial killers, stopping guys from loading legs into wood chippers. The way the world should be.

Alias Season 5

I just finished watching Alias season 5. I began watching the show in undergrad, and kept up with it through season 4, but I think I decided to pass on season 5 because I thought watching a pregnant spy would be lame. Now I think it is awesome.

Admittedly, I am annoyed at how women in television and film always seem to have ridiculously short labors. I mean, they start having contractions and 10 minutes later, they’re pushing out a baby. But I guess I should be grateful that the show didn’t have Sydney Bristow die in childbirth (I’m looking at YOU, The Walking Dead! And Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith! And pretty much every other film/television childbirth ever.)

Anyways, I enjoyed the season. It felt a little rushed at the end, but overall it was a decent way of wrapping up a very good spy show.