Lucy Goes to the Hospital Lucy Goes to the Hospital "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" is an episode of the 1950s American television show "I Love Lucy" in which the title character, Lucy Ricardo, gives birth to her son, "Little Ricky," after a "predictably chaotic" sequence of events. Twelve hours before the broadcast, the actress who played Lucy Ricardo, Lucille Ball, had given birth to Desi Arnaz, Jr. by cesarean section. The episode had actually been filmed on November 14, 1952. The episode was the culmination of an unprecedented pairing of the fictional pregnancy of Lucy with the real-life pregnancy of Lucille Ball; "real-time pregnancy
Lucy Goes to the Hospital was fictively narrated for the first time on American television." When the episode premiered on January 19, 1953, 71.9% of all American homes with television sets tuned in, amounting to 44 million viewers watching the episode. It received higher ratings than the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which received 29 million viewers, the day afterward. According to the Indian newspaper "The Telegraph", scripts for the episode were reviewed by a rabbi, a minister, and a priest in order to make sure it would not be offensive. The cover story of "Newsweek" on January 19, 1953 was about the episode