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In the first season of "The 100" in the episode named "His Sister's keeper", we saw the past of Bellamy and his sister Octavia. In the flashback we see a young Bellamy and his mother, about to deliver a baby, in their quarter, in The Ark. Since the rule of Ark is strictly against more than one children, Bellamy's mother had to hide Octavia from the Council.

But how did she get away with the fact that she was pregnant, obviously for nine or more months from the Council? I mean, one can really tell from the physical changes a woman goes through, that she was pregnant at the time.

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  • Can it be en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_pregnancy?
    – Silver Bebs
    Jan 15, 2019 at 12:49
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    No. I don't think so. Denial would not be taken as an explanation according to the situations in the Ark.
    – Kushal Bhuyan
    Jan 15, 2019 at 13:02
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    Fair enough... I was just noticing that one can really tell from the physical changes a woman goes through, that she was pregnant at the time is not true, e.g. in some pregnancy denial cases there can have no significant changes until the delivery.
    – Silver Bebs
    Jan 15, 2019 at 13:05
  • Maybe she just locked herself up in their quarters (claiming to be sick or something if anyone asked) once she got far enough along that she couldn't hide it anymore. Stay in bed with some blankets while other people are present, etc. Given the closed environment of a space station, it's not hard to believe they'd have strict policies about isolating yourself when you're sick to prevent the spread of viruses.
    – Steve-O
    Jan 15, 2019 at 16:09

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Possibly a combination of not showing herself much, fiddling when she did, and people not conceiving she could have another child.

On "The 100 writers room" Tumblr (which is official), people asked about birth control on the Ark, and the reply is that every woman has a contraceptive implant, which Aurora got removed "somehow". The writers themselves seem to admit to a bit of handwaving until they "establish" something.

We get this question A LOT as everyone seems really curious about the Ark views on contraception and multiple births.

We’ve established (as has the book on which the show is based) that the Ark maintained strict population controls. Families were allowed one child (by which those births were planned by removing birth control implants to allow conception and then re-implanting the birth control after the baby is born).

In the case of Octavia, her mother had her birth control removed surreptitiously, (or never had it re-implanted after Bellamy was born. We haven’t established this definitively) thus allowing her to give birth to a second child, which she needed to keep hidden below the floor so as to evade discovery…which, ultimately, failed when Octavia was discovered and imprisoned.

As for the "hiding" part, as a comment notices, isolation will most likely be respected on the Ark, for health measures; and when she absolutely needed to show herself, if no one expects her to be pregnant, a good coat/carrying away stuff (Bellamy?) might have hidden it.

Apparently Seinfeld used that with a pregnant actress for half a season:

Julia Louis-Dreyfus's off-screen pregnancy meant that her character had to spend the latter half of this season hiding her belly behind furniture and laundry baskets.

from an Internet Archive snapshot of Sony Picture's website

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    Other possible factors, like "Women who are very fit may have no periods at all, which could make detection of pregnancy harder, and if the baby is small too, then there may be no real noticeable pregnancy bump." (source) or a tilted / retroverted uterus. It's not that likely, but it's fiction, after all.
    – Anne Daunted GoFundMonica
    Jan 15, 2019 at 16:56
  • @AnneDaunted to be honest any kind of "science" in this show is fiction. Don't get me wrong though, I love it :-)
    – Jenayah
    Jan 15, 2019 at 16:59

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