"I've got it all figured out. The baby can have Bart's crib and Bart'll sleep with us until he's 21."
— Homer Simpson, The Simpsons, "Lisa's First Word"
A new baby is on the way! Usually this is great news because Babies Make Everything Better. The problem is that there is not enough space in the parents' home for another family member. The new parents may live in a small apartment in The City and move to a more spacious and kid friendly place in Suburbia. In another iteration, the parents already own a single family home, but they need to move because it's becoming too small for their growing family.
The transition may happen on screen in a moving day episode, or offscreen at the end of the series along with Babies Ever After. In a less common alternative, the family puts an addition on their house instead of moving.
See also The Moving Experience, Pregnancy Tropes, and Babies, Babies Everywhere. Can overlap Expecting Excites Everyone, especially if help is needed to provide or move to the new space.
Examples:
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Fan Works
- Baby Boom (Shawna Canon): In Chapter 68, Adrien buys a huge mansion for his new family. Of course, he was expecting a lot more people in it when he made the purchase. He didn’t yet know Ladybug’s identity at the time, so he was expecting to live in it with Ladybug (Marinette), the guy that got her pregnant (Adrien), their baby (Louis), Marinette, her baby (Louis) and the guy she loves (Adrien). So when the reveal happens, he’s embarrassed that his mansion for seven is now for three. Luckily, Marinette gets the idea to invite some of their friends and their babies to fill in the extra room.
- As a variant, in beautifulpurpleflame
's The Little Cherub series, the Titans Tower is more than big enough, but there is some debate about building a bigger car due to all the growing (and about to grow) families. They also clear out one of the Tower's storage floors.
- In Second Chances (TheNovelArtist), Adrien convinces Marinette to move into a bigger house six months after their son is born.
- In Two Pink Lines by BonneyQ, Adrien and Marinette are living in a kitchenette together, but start looking into buying a house once Marinette falls pregnant (drawing the attention of Adrien's father, who's curious about his son needing to withdraw so much money).
- Us and Them: Shortly after they get married, Aeris tells Sephiroth they need a bigger apartment, because their family is already about to grow.
Films — Animated
- The one clear reason for the Davis family's move in Toy Story 1 is that six-year-old Andy was originally sharing a room with his toddler sister, Molly.
- A variant in 101 Dalmatians. Early in the film, Pongo and Perdita have fifteen puppies, and their human masters — Roger and Anita — are uncertain whether they will have room for all of them. Over the course of the movie, Pongo and Perdita rescue 84 more puppies from the villain. Luckily, by the time they get back to their masters, Roger has struck gold with a hit song, and he and Anita are easily persuaded to adopt all the puppies, with Roger gleefully announcing that "We'll buy a big place, in the country!" to accommodate them all. The sequel, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure begins with the Radcliffs moving from London to the Dalmatian Plantation farm (although Patch gets left behind).
Films — Live-Action
- In Coneheads, Beldar and Prymaat are living in a basement apartment when Prymaat is pregnant; shortly before she goes into labor, they discuss moving out to a house in the suburbs as they've been saving for it. They do so, leading to a Good-Times Montage of the Conehead family living in their new house.
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps: The Baxter Building is big enough already when Sue Storm is pregnant with Franklin, so it's simply a matter of babyproofing the place, which is handled by Robot Buddy / Robot Maid H.E.R.B.I.E. (which doesn't go without causing some slapstick when Ben Grimm/the Thing trips into what H.E.R.B.I.E. set up for the incoming baby).
- Father of the Bride Part II both discusses this and shows this, George thinks his daughter and son-in-law's house is too small for a baby. However it's actually his house that gets an extension when his wife gets pregnant at the same time as their daughter. This is after he actually buys it back when he had been considering downsizing to a condo near the beach.
- A more somber version of this occurs in Threads with Jimmy and Ruth renovating a room in their new apartment for their soon-to-be daughter but with tensions between the two nuclear superpowers and a Protect & Survive PSA detailing how to deal with dead bodies in your fallout room, poor Ruth breaks down crying and Jimmy comforts her.
- We Need to Talk About Kevin: In both the film and the book, Franklin and Eva move out of New York City because of their new baby Kevin; Franklin doesn't even ask Eva before choosing a house. In the book especially, Eva emphasizes how much she hates the house and its location.
- What to Expect When You're Expecting: Holly and Alex buy a new house in anticipation of adopting a baby.
Literature
- The Berenstain Bears: In Berenstain Bears' Moving Day, one of the reasons that the bears move from their small cave to the bigger tree house is to have space to expand their family. Sister Bear is born in the next book.
- Bruce Coville's Book of... Nightmares II: Downplayed in Amanda's Room. After her older sister dies, Brenda is moved into Amanda's bedroom so their parents can use Brenda's old room, which is closer to their own, for the baby they're expecting. Unfortunately, Amanda's ghost doesn't appreciate it because she hasn't accepted her own death yet and tries to drive Brenda out.
- Played for Drama in The Diamond Girls. Right at the start of the novel, the heavily-pregnant Sue announces to her daughters that they're moving in order to have more space when the new baby arrives. Sue has a point seeing as the five of them are currently living in a three-bedroom council flat on the top floor, although Sue doesn't inform the girls until a week before the moving date, which upsets Martine in particular as she'll have to move far away from her boyfriend. Sue also didn't do a thorough check of the new place, so the family ends up moving into an extremely rundown council house that is less-than-ideal for a family with young kids. Luckily, by the end they've started clearing it up and it could potentially be much nicer in the future.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Heffleys lived in a small apartment when Greg was born and his brother Rodrick, a toddler at the time, was sleeping in the crib, so their parents had Greg sleep in the top drawer of a dresser. Frank eventually moved everything out of his office to turn it into a nursery for Greg, and the Heffleys later moved into the home they currently live in before Manny was born.
- In More Than Human, the mentally disabled wild man Lone spends eight years staying with the Prodds, a farming couple, who teach him to talk. He lives in a room they built on the side of their house for the child they couldn't have. When Mrs. Prodd finally manages to get pregnant, Mr. Prodd asks Lone to leave.
- In The October Child, the Mariners build a new addition onto their house in anticipation of Carl's birth.
- Taylor's Ark: The book opens with Dr. Taylor living in a colony on Mars, in her old room with the aunt and uncle who helped raise her. Since they have children and she also has quite a few pets, space is at a premium and she, planning to stay on Mars for her pregnancy and then for the first three or four years of the child's life, tries looking into her own apartment. Then legislation passes keeping pregnant women, children to the age of eighteen, and their primary caretakers from leaving the planet, and a lot of parents who'd planned to be on Mars on a more temporary basis had to try to find housing. Dr. Taylor stops looking, knowing that a given family with multiple children would be more likely to find a place.
Live-Action TV
- A recurring plot point in Good Luck Charlie is that the Duncan home is too small for the family of six.
- At the start of the series, eldest daughter Teddie has moved into a spare room in the basement so infant daughter Charlie can move out of her parents' room into her own space whilst sons P.J. and Gabe are forced to share a room - which is itself a conflict in multiple episodes due to the boys both wanting their own space.
- Subeverted when Amy is expecting a baby at the beginning of the third season, she gets the idea to move to a larger house (where they might also get a pet). However, after remembering the times with each of the kids in their current house, she can't bear to move anymore. When the newest baby is born, the issue about space once again comes up - Charlie is old enough that she shouldn't be sharing a room with a newborn, whilst Gabe is now a teenager in need of his own space and doesn't want to share his room with Tobey after finally getting it to himself when P.J. moved out. By the end of the series, the show had stopped trying to explain how the Duncan family all fit into the house as P.J. moved back into the house and Toby presumably had his own space to sleep.
- Played with in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when Philip and Vivian push Hilary into moving into an apartment so they can use her room for the baby they're expecting. She gets around it by moving into the pool house, reasoning that she'll technically be out of the house and won't have to pay a ton of money to live there. Philip is disappointed, as he really wanted Hilary out of his hair.
- The second season finale of The Guest Book has Tommy and Nikki expecting a second child. Tommy decides to discontinue rentals of Barefoot Retreat so they can move into it.
- Friends: At the end of the series, Monica and Chandler move to a bigger place in the suburbs as they adopt newborn twins.
- House Hunters: The show has featured a number of expecting couples looking for a bigger place in episodes such as "More Space for Baby," "A New Baby Means a New Place" and "Make Room for a Baby in Durham."
- Malcolm in the Middle: When Lois gets pregnant with Jamie, Hal rips the wall off of their bedroom to add a nursery. Not surprisingly, it isn't the most well thought out plan, but it does get finished eventually.
- Charmed (1998): When Piper gets pregnant with Wyatt, Leo converts their closet into a nursery (and Grams is disgusted to learn that this is seemingly the only thing they've done to prepare for a new witch child). Phoebe and Paige briefly move out around the time Chris is born, allowing Piper to move her sons into their now-empty rooms. It's never explained where exactly the boys stay after the sisters move back in.
- Frasier: When Roz learns she's pregnant she notes she'll have to move out of her studio apartment and find something bigger. She eventually finds a larger apartment near the marina that she lives in for the rest of the series.
- On The Cosby Show, what makes both set of parents finally put their collective foot down about Sondra and Elvin's crappy living situation and their refusal to accept an financial help is that she's pregnant and that the child should not be raised in such detrimental conditions.
Theatre
- A Raisin in the Sun: Though not the main impetus for the Youngers' move (four adults and one child live in a two-bedroom apartment), the realization that Ruth is pregnant gives them one more reason to move to a larger house.
Video Games
- Stardew Valley: After completing a Romance Sidequest, you and your spouse may have children, but this first requires Renovating the Player Headquarters to add a nursery with a crib.
Visual Novels
- Daughter for Dessert: Averted in the “good” ending with Amanda. The protagonist and Amanda do not get a place to accommodate their new baby. Rather, they move to Hawaii to hide Amanda’s pregnancy from the people who know them.
- Inverted in the epilogue with Tamara and Johanna in Double Homework. The protagonist and his sisters get a larger house before they ever decide to try for babies.
- Downplayed in the Family Ending of Melody. The protagonist and title character do indeed buy a house to accommodate their new baby, but they buy the exact same house in the Good Ending (in which Melody and MC do not have a child).
Web Comics
- An odd example in Kevin & Kell where the house makes room for the baby preemptively: Lindesfarne and Fenton's sentient Tree reveals in this comic that she's grown enough that they can add an extra room to their house. When Lindesfarne asks what they would need another room for, Tree drops pine cones on their heads. When Lindesfarne admonishes Tree that she's wasting her chance to create offspring, Tree just thinks 'talk about denial'. (It'd take Lindesfarne and Fenton another three years to have a child, and then only cause the condom broke.)
Western Animation
- Bobby's World: When Martha is pregnant with the twins, the family decides they need to move to a bigger house, much to Bobby's discomfort. In the end, they only move into a house across the street from their old one, so it's not as big of a deal as Bobby originally thinks.
- Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood: The Tiger family's expecting a new baby is the subject of a story arc; one episode in the arc sees the family preparing a previously-unseen room in the house to be used as a nursery.
- F is for Family: In season 3, the Murphy's are expecting a fourth child and add an extra room to their house to accommodate it. Unfortunately, Chet Stevenson rats them out to the city and they don't have a permit, so they have to tear it down.
- Peppa Pig: In the episode "Bigger House", Peppa and her family search for a new house before the new baby comes. In the end, they decide to remodel their house instead, which occurs in the next episode "The Big Build".
- Discussed in the Rugrats episode "Angelica's Worst Nightmare". Drew mentions to Angelica that "Mommy and I might have to give up a few things to make room" for the new baby. This results in Angelica having a nightmare where her parents move her to the laundry room and give the new baby her room and all her toys. Even before it turns out there won't be a new baby after all, Drew assures Angelica that would never happen.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Lisa's First Word," Homer, Marge, and baby Bart are living in a small apartment near downtown Springfield. However, when Marge becomes pregnant with Lisa, she tells Homer they need to live in a bigger place, and go house hunting, until they eventually buy the house they live in now.
- In "I Married Marge," after Homer marries Marge because she's pregnant with Bart, they move into her family's house and live with her mother, Patty, and Selma because they can't afford their own place due to Homer quitting his job at the miniature golf course to look for a better paying job, and ending up unemployed. It was only after Homer started earning a decent wage working in the power plant that they were able to move in to their own apartment sometime after this episode's events and "Lisa's First Word".