A Grey’s Anatomy Actress Just Announced She’s Pregnant IRL — But How Will It Affect That Big Plot Twist?

Surprise, surprise: Grey’s Anatomy star Camilla Luddington is pregnant with her second child, she announced on Instagram on Monday. 

Luddington revealed the news with a photo of her standing with Cinderella at Disneyland, holding her pregnant stomach. 

“Me: ‘I’m just gonna do a super casual pregnancy announcement.’ Also me: ‘I NEED PRINCESSES!!!!!!’” Luddington joked, sharing that she and her husband, 13 Reasons Why actor Matthew Alan, are “excited to add to [their] little family” as well as give their daughter Hayden, who was born in 2017, a sibling. 

Her pregnancy is the reason behind Luddington’s recent social media break. She says she was dealing with “exhaustion” as well as “morning (read: alllllll day) sickness.”

“Have I been [vomiting] mid filming at work? Yep! Oh the glamor of growing new humans,” she wrote. 

Luddington’s pregnancy, which has not yet been written into Grey’s Anatomy, comes at an interesting point in the show’s timeline. Luddington’s character Jo was recently abandoned by her husband Alex (Justin Chambers, one of the original cast members who announced his surprising Grey’s Anatomy exit earlier this year) so that he could start a life with ex-wife Izzie (Katherine Heigl). Via letters Alex wrote to Jo, friend Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), and Chief of Surgery Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) he revealed that Izzie secretly had his kids via the embryos they created earlier in the series. When he found out, Alex had to stay with her.

Alex and Jo don’t have children, but if they did already have kids, Alex would have likely made a different decision. Alex says as much in his letters, stressing that if it were just a choice between his wife and Izzie, he would have to pick Jo — “but Izzie has my kids.”

There’s no guarantee that Grey’s Anatomy will write Luddington’s pregnancy into Jo’s storyline for the season, and plenty of series — including fellow Shondaland series Scandal — have used everything from potted plants to big purses to hide their star’s pregnant stomachs. 

It is worth wondering if the show will go the arguably more challenging route and have Jo be pregnant with Alex’s baby. As it doesn’t seem like Chambers plans on returning to Grey’s Anatomy anytime soon, that would throw a wrench into this storyline. 

Luddington recently teased that Jo has lots of drama coming up on Grey’s Anatomy. In response to a fan on Instagram who said they were excited for Jo’s future, she wrote:

“Omg me too! The scripts for Jo this season are [shocked emoji faces]! JUST. WAIT.”

If the shock is over Alex refusing to return to Seattle to meet his other biological child, well, that’s apparently the Alex we’re dealing with in 2020.