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The Sims 2 Pregnancy and Baby Care guide

Version 1.0

Sections

0) Intro, version history, and copyright stuff

1) Pregnancy? In the Sims?

2) Before you get pregnant
a) financial concerns
b) child care

3) How to get pregnant
a) Male-Female
b) Male-Male/Female-Female (coming soon, haven't made homosexual couples yet)

4) Okay, so now I'm pregnant, now what?
a)time spent pregnant
b)pregnancy stages
c)pregnant sim's needs
d)interaction with the pregnant sim
e)the birth
5) Genetics
a) Dominant vs recessive genes
6) Wait, this baby is an actual character!! What to do?!
a) furnature
b) interaction
c) needs
d) growth (coming soon, as my baby is only a few days old)
e) social services? (coming soon, as I take good care of my baby,
and I don't know if the social service agents exist in 2)
7) Thanks and whatnot

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Section 0

This is the guide to Pregnancy and Baby Care in The Sims 2,
as it is different from what it was in The Sims, and may confuse some people.
Please E-Mail me at Terulian_Maveric [at] yahoo [dot] com
(replace [at] with @ and [dot] with a .(period)) if you have corrections,
contributions, or questions. Please include "Sims 2 pregnancy guide" or
something similar in the subject line, as if I don't know who you are and the
subject line doesn't look right, I assume the e-mail contains either a virus
or is spam and mark it as such. If you contribute to the guide you'll be
recognized in the section you contributed to and in the "thanks" section to
the guide. This guide is the property of me, and as such, cannot be reproduced
or re-posted without my permission. This guide, as of this version, was made
exclusively for GameFAQs.com. If you come across it at any other website,
please e-mail me letting me know, following the same guidelines for the
subject line as with a query (Sims 2 pregnancy guide somewhere in there).
Generally, if you ask me, I won't have a problem with you posting this guide
on your site or on any other site as long as you ask me first.
Maxis owns all copyrights to The Sims, The Sims 2, and all other programs
thereof, and I had nothing to do with the game.

Version 1.0
-Created Guide, released Thursday, September 23


Section 1

Pregnancy? In the Sims?

As odd as this may sound, yes. In the origional sims, you used to be able
to just make the sims kiss, and a baby would pop out of nowhere in a
flowery explosion of cribs. But in this, you must actually take more
steps in becoming pregnant. Here I plan on guiding you and your sims
through the processes of getting pregnant,getting through the pregnancy,
and taking care of the baby in its infancy. And, just for the record,
give a basic lesson on genetics so that you have some idea of what to
expect the baby to look like.



Section 2

Before you get pregnant
a) financial concerns
You have to have a good financial situation to have a baby, just as in real
life. I would suggest having at LEAST 5000 simoleons on hand to purchace the
things you'll need for the baby. I recommend having 10000 just in case.
Unlike in The Sims, you must use food from the refrigerator to feed the
baby, so food costs are an issue. You must also buy a crib for the baby,
and eventually you need to have it it's own room.

b) child care
The Sims 2 has a Nanny service that you can order on the phone, but they
cost money (10 dollars plus 15 dollars per hour), plus there are advantages
to interacting with the baby yourself (see section 6), so I personally
don't recommend a nanny, but the downside is that you must have at least one
sim stay at home, unemployed to take care of the baby.



Section 3

How to get pregnant

a) Male-Female.
In The Sims, you could have a baby in one way : kissing until they asked if
they should have a baby. In the Livin' Large expansion of the game, they
added the Vibromatic Love Bed, which allowed your sims to "Play In Bed".
You could then have a baby from that if you did it too often.
In the Sims 2, I'm not sure if kissing still works, though I'm
pretty sure it doesn't (will try to see if it does and update in a later
version), and there's no vibromatic love bed. So how to have a baby?!
Well, the people at Maxis gave you the vibromatic love bed in every bed
essentially. You can now relax on every bed. If 2 sims (preferably who are
in love) are on the same bed, they can interact with certain commands.
These commands are "Cuddle" "Make out" "WooHoo", and "Try for
Baby".
It's this last command that is the key. You must try for a baby.
It will give an animation reminiscent of Sims 1 love bed "lumps moving
under the cover", and your sims will come out with a higher fun rating
than they had. And, as an added side note,in The Sims 2, "WooHoo" and
"Try for baby" doesn't take as much away from your stats as "Play in Bed"
did in Livin' Large.

b) Male-Male/Female-Female.
There is a rumor that you can get same-sex couples to impregnate one
another in this game. While I haven't tested this, I intend to soon.
If you have, please E-Mail me using the guidelines in Section 0 and
you'll get credit in this section.



Section 4

Okay, so I'm pregnant, now what?

a) time spent pregnant
I found that my female sim (based off of my wonderful fiance), was
pregnant for about 10 sim-days (240 realtime minutes) before giving
birth to our beautiful baby girl Naomi

b) Pregnancy Stages
There are, as in real life, 3 stages in pregnancy. These are shown
more rapidly in the sims, however, and you'll get a mini-cutscene,
showing the pregnant sim's stomach grow in bursts after a nights
sleep usually. As her stomach grows, her mood swings and her needs
increase. In the first stage, your sim will get morning sickness,
and vomit alot, and a thought will appear with a pacifier and a
question mark above their head. Then, their stomach will be slightly
expanded, and they'll start to walk differently. At this point,
they'll also start to wear maternity clothes. After that their
stomach keeps expanding until the delivery (see sub-section e in
this section)

c) Pregnancy sim's needs
In general, the pregnant sim will have their Energy, Bladder,
and Hunger decrease more rapidly. This is a mild increase
during the first stages, but gets to be more and more noticable
with the later stages. Near the time of delivery, it may be
difficult to fufil your sim's other needs, particularly fun and
hygene. Hygene is easier than fun, while the other needs can be
taken care of while taking care of the other 3 (social and comfort
while eating, comfort while sleeping). Try and set aside some time
for your pregnant sim to have fun, but remember: they're pregnant.
Don't have them do anything too strenuous. I'm not sure if strenuous
activity has any adverse effects on the pregnancy, but I wouldn't
take chances, this is a baby afterall.

d) Interacting with the pregnant sim
The pregnant sim will usually be grouchy, as their needs are harder
to fufil. However, when they are in a good mood, there are a few
actions you can only do while they're pregnant. These are under the
new tab "pregnancy" when you click on your pregnant sim. You can have
another sim rub their stomach, or have them listen to it. I haven't
gotten my pregnant sim in a good enough mood to allow it yet, so if
you want to send descriptions of the animations, please feel free,
and I may include them in the guide.

e) The birth
After all the pregnancy, the game will go to a cutscene, in which the
pregnant sim stands, and starts holding its stomach, and moaning. Then
it shows the sims select arrow twitching and sprinkling magic dust stuff,
and then it splits into 2 arrows with one being smaller, then you see a
picture of your sim mother(using mother as the term for the one that
carried the baby) with your new baby in their arms. When it goes back to
the normal view, it will ask you for a name, and the default name will be
Baby (Boy/Girl). The parents will have the coveted Platinum Mood for about
1-2 days after the birth, but only after the first birth.



Section 5

Genetics

Okay, a break from game mechanics to have a brief science lesson. This
baby will have characteristics based on your parent sims. Using this
lesson, you can predict how your sims might turn out. Physical traits
are caused by genes and chromosones. There are about 42 genes, and they
are arranged in sets of 2, so there are 21 gene set. Each sex cell has
21 single chromosones, carrying one of the 2 chromosones that that
particular parent had. Now, you may think "well, if one sim had blue
eyes, and one had brown eyes, how am I gonna know which my kid will have?".
That can be explained VIA Dominant vs. Recessive. To do this, we must use
Mendel's box (at least I think that's what this thing is called). Now, every
possible thing for a gene has a gene that is dominant and a gene that is
recessive. I'm sure it has to be a bit more complex than just Dominant vs.
Recessive, but this is the extent of my knowledge. As an example, we take
Blue eyes versus Brown eyes. In this case, brown eyes are the dominant trait,
and blue eyes are the recessive trait. The recessive vs. Dominant traits are
represented with lowercase letters for recessive, and uppercase letters
for dominant traits. In ANY case, if a dominant gene is present,
it will take precidence. This makes the sim parent with a dominant feature,
such as brown eyes, the X factor in the guessing game. So if we take a sim
with blue eyes, and a sim with brown eyes we have this :

Parent 1 : BB (brown eyed) or Bb (brown eyed with a blue recessive gene)
Parent 2 : bb (blue eyed)

To see the chances of a Blue Eyed Baby, we must use a Mendel Grid. It is
always, for this, a 2X2 grid. This grid is labeled on each axis with a
sim's genes. For this example, we'll use the Bb sim for the brown eyed
parent, and the bb parent for blue eyed.
P2
B b
---------
P | | |
b| Bb | bb | BB = Brown-eyed
1 | | | Bb = Brown-eyed
|---------| bb = Blue-eyed
| | |
b| Bb | bb |
| | |
---------

So you have a 50% 50% chance with that combo. But what if the brown-eyed
parent has no recessive blue-eyed gene?

P2
B B
---------
P | | |
b| Bb | Bb |
1 | | |
|---------|
| | |
b| Bb | Bb |
| | |
---------

So you have no chance of a blue-eyed child, but if they (the child) marry
someone with blue eyes, they have the chances above of a blue-eyed child.
One more case to look at is 2 Bb parents.