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Pregnant Pause: Should Real-Life Pregnancies Be Written Into Soaps?

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Odds are when your favorite soap heroine is pregnant, she just might be expecting a bundle of joy in real life, too!

Do you prefer it when characters and actresses are pregnant at (or around) the same time? Or should one not affect the other? Soap Hub asked you to weigh in on this and you gave some surprising answers. Read on to get the scoop!

Pregnant With Possibilities
The majority of you, 66%, voted for joint blessed event celebrations, noting that, “We can see that the actress is pregnant!” Writing it in “just means more storyline.”

Looking back, there have been some great examples of this. On The Bold and the Beautiful, Brooke became pregnant with legacy character Rick Forrester, her son with Eric, when Katherine Kelly Lang was expecting her son Jeremy.

More recently, on Days of Our Lives, Nadia Bjorlin’s real life pregnancy with son Torin Mathias was going on when Chloe was acting as surrogate for Daniel and Nicole with baby Holly.

An iconic example was on The Young and the Restless when Tracey Bregman’s pregnancy with son Austin being written into the show when her character Lauren was pregnant with Scott (now Daniel Hall).

Long after Lauren got a kidnapped Scotty back, her feud with Sheila (Kimberlin Brown) continued. (Who thinks there won’t be a crossover with Y&R and B&B now that Sheila’s back?)

Pregnant Pause
A small but vocal percentage of you, 22%, voted “Not sure. It depends on the character.” A great example of this is Abby Newman on Y&R. Her portrayer, Melissa Ordway, is expecting in real life, but Abby’s not, which makes sense give her current love life consists of Moonlighting-esque bantering with Scott.

The remaining voters are against characters being pregnant just because the actress is expecting, voting to “break out the potted plants and extra large purses”. While this choice received the fewest percentage of votes with 12%, it actually makes the most sense.

Actresses may not reveal that they’re expecting until they’re three months along for medical reasons. By the time a show writes in the pregnancy, the actress is far along and the character doesn’t end up giving birth until after the performer returns from her real-life maternity leave!

An example of this is General Hospital’s Kristina Wagner (Felicia). She gave birth to her son, Harrison in December 1994, but her character didn’t deliver daughter Georgie until the following March!

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