The sleeping child (maghrebi Arabic: ragued or bou-mergoud), according to Moroccan and the wider Maghrebian folk belief, is a fetus which has been rendered dormant by black or white magic and may eventually wake up and be born after the normal pregnancy term. This belief, supported by the concept that God's will controls everything and that no event should be considered truly impossible, is used by local communities to deal with occasional cases of pregnancy in women with absentee husbands, a frequent situation in the modern era due to the large number of males working as immigrant labor in Europe. This folk belief is used to dismiss an accusation of adultery and the consequences that such an accusation would bring.

This belief was acknowledged by traditional legislation in Morocco, and is still given as an explanation by some widowed or even separated women expecting their ex-husbands to acknowledge the paternity of a child born up to twelve months after the separation being at the Article 154 of the current Moudawana (Moroccan law) ; itstipulates that a child born up to one year after the separation is considered as fathered by that man; Morocco also being the only country leaving the legal option, for women to be pregnant up to one year without any explanation, just by feeling

The storyline of L'Enfant endormi (2005), a Belgo-Moroccan movie by Yasmine Kassari, is built around this theme.