While viewers of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit may have been sad to see one half of their favorite crime-fighting duo absent for some of Season 8, fans knew it was for a very good reason: Mariska Hargitay, who plays Olivia Benson on the long-running drama, was on maternity leave! Here’s why they had to give a different in-universe explanation for Benson’s absence.

Why Olivia Benson didn’t get pregnant when Mariska Hargitay did

At the end of 2006, the year she welcomed her son August, Hargitay reflected on the immense changes in her life in an essay in TV Guide. “In the beginning of 2006, I was like a lot of women in America — pregnant and still on the job. Of course, lots of actresses do that. Some even have it written into the script. That wasn’t going to be the case for Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” she revealed, explaining, “There’s no time for morning sickness when you’re running through the streets of New York lugging a gun.”

Of course, some female NYPD detectives do welcome children, but it sounds like it just would have changed the premise of the show way too much. Benson has always been a hundred percent committed to her job — to suddenly be a mom, too, would be a major shift at a moment when it wasn’t necessary for the character.

As Hargitay wrote on her blog at the time, “the producers have decided not to make Olivia pregnant.” Instead, she went undercover for a while, and Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) got a temporary replacement partner named Dani Beck (Connie Nielsen) for six episodes.
Olivia and Noah Benson walk down the street together on Law and Order SVU episode 2310
When Benson finally became a mom seven seasons later, it was a much more integrated storyline; the ever-compassionate detective saw a child in need, the orphaned baby of a trafficking victim, and after bonding with the kid, stepped in to take care of him forever. Benson may not have given birth to Noah (Ryan Buggle), but she is his mother.

“One of the greatest things about becoming a mother is that it redefines you. I never knew I was capable of loving another person so much,” Hargitay wrote in TV Guide about becoming a mom in real life. Sounds like something Benson would agree with!