Game Help:Babies and Children

Babies and Children

This guide is all about babies, pregnancy, and raising kids in The Sims 2.

Pregnancy

Pre-Pregnancy

Try to make sure your sims are ready for the new arrival. This means you'll need to have some simoleons saved up to pay for a crib and changing table, a separate area in which to put the nursery, and enough simoleons ready to convert that nursery into a new bedroom for the child once they grow up. You'll also need to pay for bottles (which come out of your food budget) and perhaps hire a nanny, so having at least 5000 simoleons per baby is advised.

Getting Pregnant

The easiest way to get pregnant is to have a male and female sim relax on a bed. They'll need to be in love to be able to try for baby (or woohoo). With one sim selected in live mode, click on the other sim and choose cuddle, then kiss, then make out, then try for baby. You may be able to skip some of those but hey, who doesn't like a little foreplay? They'll also give a little boost to your sims' relationships, which can be helpful if the "try for baby" option doesn't show up when you first relax.

Your sims will dive under the covers and giggle and have their fun, with fireworks. As they finish up, turn up your speakers or put on your headphones and listen closely. If their encounter has resulted in a pregnancy, you'll hear a sweet little lullabye. If you don't hear a lullabye, your female sim didn't get pregnant and you'll need to try again.

The chances of pregnancy seem to be around 50% so it may take several tries to get your sim pregnant. Remember that your female sim cannot be within 3 days of becoming an elder or she cannot become pregnant. Same sex couples and male sims cannot become pregnant through "try for baby" without hacks.

If you want your female sim to become pregnant and the father does not live on the lot, you'll need to make sure you have the female sim controllable in order to get her pregnant - you can't control the father and have her get pregnant that way unless they both live on the same lot.

Alien Pregnancy

Male sims can become pregnant if they get abducted by aliens. For more information on aliens in general, including alien pregnancy, see: Game Guide: Aliens

Other Pregnancy Methods

As mentioned above, the easiest and most common way of getting pregnant is to relax on the bed. However, your sims can get pregnant in any of the ways they can also woohoo. These include:

• In changing booths on community lots
• In hot tubs
• In cars (Nightlife)
• In the photo booth (Nightlife)
• In elevators (Open for Business)

You can also impregnate sims using the Tombstone of L&D. You spawn the tombstone of L&D by enabling the testingcheatsenabled cheat. You can use that to create same-sex pregnancies, impregnate a sim by any other sim, or even impregnate a sim by themselves!

Abortion

Have an unwanted pregnancy? Get rid of it using the InSIMenator.

What to Expect When You're Expecting

Pregnancy for sims lasts three days from the time of conception. Each day is a little different. Here's what you should expect for pregnancy:

Day 1

This is the first day after conception. You probably won't notice a ton of difference - the sim's motives/needs won't really drop much quicker than normal. However, they will be pretty nauseated with morning sickness, and will run to the toilet to throw up. They'll get a thought bubble with a pacifier and a question mark in it when this happens ("Am I pregnant?") and they may occasionally just retch a little, covering their mouth with their hand and holding their stomach, getting the same thought bubble, without throwing up.

They won't be showing yet, and they'll still be able to go to work or community lots.

Day 2

On the second day, your sim will start to show - the camera will zoom in on them and they'll grow a small pregnancy bump, switching into maternity clothing at the same time. They'll also begin to waddle when they walk, which is quite cute.

At this point, they'll need to stay home from work and community lots. Your sim will get 3 days of maternity leave at this point if they are employed.

The nausea and vomiting should be gone at this point, but you'll notice that their motives and needs will drop a lot quicker. You'll need to keep a close eye on them to make sure they are taken care of. Bladder, hunger, energy, and hygiene will drop very quickly, so you'll need to plan their day very carefully. Having someone around to do the cooking so they can just grab a plate is very helpful.

Your sim won't be able to exercise and participate in certain other activities while pregnant, but you'll find they have new interactions - other sims will be able to rub or listen to the pregnant sim's belly. The pregnant sim can also autonomously rub their own belly, which is quite cute. You can't make pregnant sims do it, though, unless you get this hack by Squinge.

Day 3

Day 3 is pretty much the same as Day 2, only needs drop a little bit quicker and the sim's pregnant belly will get even bigger. At the end of Day 3, your sim will give birth to their baby!

Birth

When your sim is ready to give birth, the camera will zoom in on them and they'll start moaning, clutching their belly, and huffing and puffing. If you have cinematics enabled in your game options, you'll get a cute little cutscene for the birth, and your sim will end up holding their beautiful bouncing baby.

After the baby or babies are born you'll get a popup in which you can name the offspring.

Sudden Pregnancy Death Syndrome

It's never really been clear whether it's due to a bug or something purposeful in the game's design, but it seems that pregnant sims will sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly just drop dead. No real cause has been identified and it happens even when the pregnant sim's needs are not low enough to die. For this reason, it is strongly advised that you remember to save your game if you're getting a sim pregnant.

Choosing Baby's Gender

If you want to get a baby of a certain gender, there's a couple methods for doing so. For more information, see: Game Help:Choose Gender of Babies.

Twins, Triplets, and More

There is a small chance (around 5-10%, higher if your sim is a twin themselves) that your sim will have twins. Because of this, you'll want to try to make sure that your sim gives birth with some empty space around them - after they have the first child they'll put it on the ground and have the second one, so they'll need to have room to put down the first baby.

If you have the Open for Business expansion, you can have your pregnant sim eat cheesecake, and that will make them have twins. There is also a cheat for having twins if you have Open for Business or later expansions.

The twinsrcute cheat is a myth - never worked and never will. Woohooing after pregnancy also does nothing to influence the chance of twins, and eating any foods other than cheesecake also does nothing to give you twins. It's also not dependent on birthsign or anything else but chance and the cheesecake/cheat stuff listed above, unless you are using a hack like the InSIMenator.

Triplets and quadruplets are not normally part of the game - you cannot get them without a hack. For that hack and other pregnancy related hacks, see: Content List: Hacks and Hacked Objects: Reproduction, Relationships, and Family.

Babies

Once babies are born, they'll remain in the baby stage for 3 days. During that time, they're pretty useless as sims go... Not many interactions you can do with them and they just sort of lay there, cry, and stink. By default, baby sims are not selectable, so you cannot view their motives/needs. You can make them selectable with the Tombstone of L&D or with the InSIMenator, though, if you want to monitor them more closely.

Caring for Babies

Baby sims will generally only cry when they are hungry or need changing.

• If they're hungry, they'll just be crying, with no green stink cloud around them. Have your sim get a bottle for them by clicking on the fridge (has to be a full-size fridge - the University mini-fridge doesn't have bottles in it).
• If they are crying and have a green stink cloud, they need their diaper changed. Either click on the baby and change their diaper directly, or on a changing table. It's a little better to use the changing table, as they'll dispose of the diaper while changing, rather than just tossing it on the floor, which drops environment scores pretty badly.
• Changing the diaper should stop the stink cloud and raise the baby's hygiene, though you can also bathe the baby in a sink.

If your babies just keep crying, it's probably a bug from the Seasons expansion pack. You'll need to get the patch to fix this.

To raise relationships with the baby (or to get it to stop crying if you're having that constant-crying Seasons bug above) try cuddling or playing with the baby. You'll also get a "tuck in" interaction if you put the baby in a crib.

Sims will autonomously feed and take care of the baby, but they're generally abysmally bad at it - it may be helpful to turn off free will for a while and just control your sims yourself. It's not uncommon for sims to pick up a stinking, crying baby that's just been fed and try to stuff a bottle in its mouth, so keep an eye on them and make sure they're not being completely stupid about child care.

Don't let your baby sim cry too long - if they stay stinky or hungry for too long, the social worker will come and take them away!

Setting Up a Nursery

You can buy baby related stuff (crib and changing table) in the catalog under Buy - Misc - Kids. Babies only really need a crib and changing table - you don't need the high chair or any toys yet and really, you could get away with not having a crib or changing table, though it's a little trickier without them.

While you can have the baby in the parents' bedroom, it's generally best to have a separate nursery (even a small one) - if the baby starts crying while the parents are sleeping, it will wake both parents, which can be a problem when one needs to get up for work in the morning. You'll have to be vigilant and cancel the "sleep" interaction for one parent to have them care for the crying baby, though... An alternate method is to put a single bed in the nursery for the "parent on duty" so they'll be woken up if the baby cries. If you have multiple babies, you may want to have either multiple nurseries, or wall/fence up each of the cribs as one crying baby will wake all of the babies.

There's really no problem with just leaving your babies on the floor - they're just as comfortable there as they are in a crib, though it does seem a little weird.

It's best to either put the nursery near the kitchen, or add a second fridge to the nursery (or get a hacked bottle warmer/nursery fridge) as sims will have to go to the fridge to get a bottle, and it will take them a while to walk through the whole house to fetch it.

Baby Birthdays

Once three days have passed, your baby will be ready to age to toddler. They'll need an adult sim to help them. An adult sim will generally get the "help with birthday" interaction automatically and go and age the baby themselves. If this doesn't happen, or if you accidentally cancel the action, you should be able to click on the baby and choose "Help with birthday" to age them. If you have trouble that way (often a problem if you have twins or more as the interactions all pile up at once), try buying a birthday cake (Misc - Party) and have the adult take the baby to the cake. This should age them up.

Toddlers

Once your baby turns into a toddler, they're a lot more interesting. They can play with toys, move around some by themselves, and you can interact with them a lot more. The toddler age lasts for 5 days.

Teaching Toddlers

The first big thing about toddlers is that they have certain life skills they can learn. These are:

• Potty training
• Walking
• Talking

There is absolutely no problem if your toddlers do not learn these skills: once they're children they'll still walk, talk, and use the toilet. They're just a good boost to aspiration points, getting your toddler's life started out right, and the parents may have wants to teach those skills to the toddlers, so it's good for everyone if they learn them. Toddlers who have learned to use the potty will also autonomously use the potty, which is helpful to frazzled, busy parents.

Any teen or adult sim can teach your toddler their life skills. They will teach the toddler faster if they're wearing the thinking cap aspiration reward - just make sure they're in gold or platinum aspiration when they use it.

Toddler Skilling

In addition to learning life skills, toddlers can spend time playing with skill-building toys, which can gain them skill points. The toys your toddler can play with (and the skills they learn from them) are:

• Rabbit Head (Charisma)
• Blocks (Logic)
• Xylophone (Creativity)

You can also find certain other custom hacked objects that allow them to learn other skills.

To have toddlers gain skill points, just leave them in a room with some skill-building toys, and they'll do the rest. Toddlers will happily play with the different toys for hours. You may want to have them concentrate on using the rabbit head, as it can be a bit boring for sims to learn charisma points later in life.

Smart Milk

The smart milk aspiration reward can be a much better way to feed your toddlers. Not only does it fill up their hunger just as well as a normal bottle, it also makes them learn much faster - both their toddler life skills as well as the skill points they'll learn through playing. Toddlers will glow blue when they are affected by smart milk.

To feed your toddler smart milk, have an adult or teen go to the smart milk dispenser and get smart milk for whichever toddler you wish to feed. Make sure the adult or teen is in gold or platinum aspiration when they get the smart milk! The bottle should glow blue once they get it out of the dispenser indicating it is a good bottle - if it glows red cancel the "give smartmilk" action and dispose of the bottle - it will not give the learning boost and will make your toddler vomit!

It's possible that the learning boost your toddlers will get from the smart milk will persist even after they stop glowing. This boost can also last into childhood, and perhaps even further. This is a bug, but one that tends to be beneficial to your gameplay, as it lets your sims learn very quickly.

Toddlers and Toilets

Toddlers have an unnatural attraction to toilets, crawling to them whenever they are accessible (often leaving their other toys behind) to play in them. This makes for very smelly toddlers who are wasting valuable skilling time on something useless - and also fills your bathrooms with puddles. For baby gates and hacks to prevent them from doing so, see: Content List: Hacks and Hacked Objects: Reproduction, Relationships, and Family.

If you want to keep them out of the toilets without using a hacked object/hack, try putting your nursery on a floor without a bathroom, or if you have Open for Business, put the toddler's play area up on a higher level using the stage tool - toddlers can't climb stairs.

Toddler Birthdays

Once five days have passed in the toddler stage, your toddler will be ready to become a child. Toddler birthdays are pretty much like baby birthdays - they'll need someone to "help with birthday" and it can sometimes be a little tricky if the action gets canceled or there are multiple toddlers aging up at the same time.

An adult sim will generally get the "help with birthday" interaction automatically and go and age the toddler themselves. If this doesn't happen, or if you accidentally cancel the action, you should be able to click on the toddler and choose "Help with birthday" to age them. If you have trouble that way (often a problem if you have twins or more as the interactions all pile up at once), try buying a birthday cake (Misc - Party) and have the adult take the toddler to the cake. This should age them up.

The Social Worker

If you don't take good enough care of your children, allowing their needs or grades to drop too low, you'll get a warning about the social worker. If you don't fix the problem soon, the social worker will show up and take your children!

Once the social worker is on the lot, there's no way to stop her from taking your kids - she'll get them even if they're in a room with no doors! The best way to keep her from showing up is preventative - keep your kids' grades up, and keep them well taken care of.

If you're not going to be able to feed your children for several hours, keep some gelatin out on the counter so they can feed themselves, or buy them a toy oven so they can bake some muffins to tide them over till dinnertime.

If your kids do get taken by the social worker, don't panic! You can adopt them back - they'll be the first kids in the adoption queue, so it should be easy to get them back, though everyone involved will have some unpleasant memories of the experience.

Contributor Credits

Thanks go to the following users for contributing tips and info that have been incorporated into this guide: sidneydoj, gjam, dillitru, TheDuecedFaerie, yamikuronue