CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother is enjoying its most-watched season, averaging 10.1 million, up 10% from last year. That’s an unusual phenomenon for a seventh-year show. For the actresses, both mothers of young daughters, the stories have centered on babies. Both Hannigan and her character, Lily, are pregnant, and the latter is due to deliver before the end of the season.

“In true sitcom form, it does not go as smooth as it should,” Hannigan says during an interview on set at MacLaren’s, the bar where the characters often meet. As a mother, “I’m a little concerned about Lily’s pregnancy choices. She isn’t the most responsible pregnant lady.”

And Smulders’ Robin learned she can’t have a baby in one of the show’s more serious story lines. She says viewers will find out more about Robin and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), who has a new girlfriend, before the end of the season.

“Robin has had a rough year. There’s been a lot of mostly downs, so I feel like the ending (of the season) is a beginning,” Smulders says. “I’ve always felt the show was very relatable. It’s nice being on for seven years, because you get to evolve and you get to have babies, and you get to have relationships that fail or prosper. And you get to see these people grow up and imagine what their lives are like, and you kind of feel part of it.”

Robin also had a tough moment with Ted (Josh Radnor), putting an end to thoughts of a romantic renewal in their on-again, off-again relationship.

“It’s cool, the evolution of our characters, because that’s so not a conversation you would normally have in their 20s,” Hannigan says. “Now that they’re in their 30s, there are conversations you need to have, because whether you want to admit it, there’s a timeline. ‘Oh, you want marriage and kids?’ Tick-tock. These are things that people in their 30s go through.”

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