The Sims 4 Babies: Giving Birth and Raising Babies
Having a baby in the sims 4, is an aspect of gameplay that just about every simmer experiences at some point or another. Getting our virtual characters pregnant and experiencing all the uncomfortable emotions that go along with it just adds some spice to our gameplay and raising babies is kinda crazy.
It’s no secret that babies lack a lot of gameplay that people are craving, and we’re still hoping that the sims team will make it so that babies can leave their bassinet. But honestly, no one is holding their breath.
Having Babies in The Sims 4
Since babies are the first life stage in the game, you aren’t able to make them through create-a-sim. The only ways to have a baby is through try for baby and getting pregnant or you can adopt a baby for §1,000.
Adopting a Baby
To adopt a baby in The Sims 4, you need to click on your computer, choose household, and click adopt §1,000. If you have The Sims 4: Cats and Dogs installed there will also be adopt pet options, but just ignore those.
When you click this interaction, a dialogue box is going to appear and you’ll get the opportunity to choose between a baby, toddler, or a child. You’ll be given a ton of options for children to adopt and you’ll get ton see their face as well as their name before you pick one.
When you finally decide on a baby to adopt, your sim will leave the lot for around an hour and you’ll get a notification letting you know that your sim is bringing home a new member of the family. At this time, you can also choose to change the name of the adopted child.
The baby will appear in a bassinet that will usually be in front of the house, but sometimes will be in random areas around your home. It’s pretty weird the places I’ve seen the baby bassinet appear. You can click on the baby’s face at the bottom of the screen to find them if you can’t seem to figure out where they went. And boom! You’re a parent.
Getting Pregnant
Getting pregnant in the Sims isn’t just for female sims anymore, with the inclusive transgender update any sim who has been given the ability to get pregnant can do it! We just love the sims for being such an inclusive and beautiful place.
To get pregnant, you need to grow a friendship and romantic relationship with a sim who is able to get your sim pregnant. Around 1/2 way through the romance bar being full, try for baby will become available.
Unlike in previous games, there are no noises that happen when your sim gets pregnant. You now have to get them out of bed, and get them to take a pregnancy test which will cost you §15, and you just need to click on any toilet for this to appear.
A notification will appear saying that your sim is eating for two, or that they are not pregnant this time. If they are pregnant they will start to show a little pretty much immediately.
Unlike previous games, there are no maternity clothes in the sims 4. This is kinda nice because the old maternity clothes weren’t the best. However, it also makes it feel less real when you see your pregnant sim wearing booty shorts and a crop top.
Having a Boy or Girl
Although the sims is known for it’s randomness, a lot of the time we are really hoping for a specific baby gender so there are a few tricks you can do to influence your baby!
Your baby is more likely to be a girl if you eat some strawberries while pregnant and spend your time listening to a lot of pop music on the radio. Your baby is more likely to be a boy if you eat some carrots while pregnant and listen to alternative music on the radio.
There is no guarantee that these things will work every time, but it’s worth a try!
Having Twins or Triplets
Having twins and triplets is another thing that is random and happens sometimes, but there are a few really awesome things you can do to try to make sure your sim has multiples.
The first is using the on ley line lot trait, lot traits are a really great way to change the characteristics of your house and this lot trait makes it more likely for your sims to get pregnant with multiples.
The second, is purchasing the fertile reward from the reward store for 3,000 satisfaction points. This has the same effect as the on ley line lot trait, but I’ve noticed that fertile works better. However, they do work really awesome together and pretty much guarantee multiple babies.
The final way to influence how many babies your sim has is if you have The Sims 4: Spa Day installed. You can go to a spa (or do it at home) and get yourself a fertility massage, which increases your chances of getting pregnant as well as increase your chance of multiples.
Pregnancy and Having The Baby
Your sim’s pregnancy is going to last 3 full days and you’ll be able to track the progress of the pregnancy with the happy pregnancy moodlets. You’ll see which trimester your sim is in (each one lasts 1 day) and how long until the next trimester.
When your sim reaches the third trimester, the moodlet will say Gives Birth In ??? and when you finally see this you know that the baby will be here soon.
During the pregnancy, your sim is going to get morning sickness which results in them throwing up… a lot. And getting an uncomfortable moodlet. If they have the morning sickness moodlet, you can click on a toilet and get them to throw up to try and decrease its length.
When pregnant, your sim will be able to unlock two more interactions that are involved with the pregnancy. They can invite to feel baby and share big news.
When your sim goes into labor, you’ll get a bright orange notification in the corner letting you know and your sim will feel extremely uncomfortable. You can do anything you want while in labour but your sim will not enjoy it.
You have two options for giving birth (if you have The Sims 4: Get to Work) and that is to give birth at home with a bassinet, or go to the hospital and give birth there. You can choose these options by clicking on the pregnant sim.
There’s also a chance that the father of the baby will start freaking out and the action says pre-parental panic and they will often freak out at the hospital if you choose that option as well.
If you already have a bassinet, you can just click on it and choose have baby as well. If you wait long enough, a bassinet will be supplied to you by Social Services and you can start giving birth that way.
Your pregnant sim will go to the bassinet and just start pushing (while standing up…) and a baby will appear soon, and you can choose their name!
Taking Care of Babies
In The Sims 4, you aren’t able to control your babies which means you aren’t able to see their needs. This adds a bit of real life to the game because you can’t see the needs of any real babies either!
Your babies have 3 needs you need to pay attention to, those are: hunger, hygiene (diaper), and social. Anytime your babies needs are high and they don’t need anything, they’ll either just lay there or they will go straight to bed.
When your baby’s hygiene is low and their diaper needs changing, you’ll see a beautiful green cloud of stink hanging out above their head. This shows you that you need to click on them and choose the change dirty diaper interaction to make your baby happy.
Unless you have a high parenting skill, you won’t be able to tell if your sim is hungry or has low social. A dirty diaper is the only low need that shows anything visually for a baby.
When your baby is hungry you have two options for the mother, you can either breast feed or bottle feed. The father of the baby only has the option to bottle feed. However, if you’re a male sim who gave birth to an alien baby, you’re able to breast feed.
The interactions you can use to help your babies social need include: make silly face, rock, talk, shoosh, coo at, and bounce. These all really help to build your relationship with the baby.
For the most part, sims are very quick to go and try and take care of babies that are crying. Even children will walk up to babies and coo at them to try and stop the crying, but they are unable to actually do anything to care for them if they are hungry or have a dirty diaper.
Leaving The House
Luckily, when you leave the house and leave your baby at home they will be immediately sent to daycare! This means you won’t lose your kids for leaving them home alone like in previous versions of the game. I can’t even count how many times I lost my kids because my sim went to work without hiring a babysitter in old sims games.
You also have the option of hiring a nanny to take care of your children, this is nice because the nanny can take care of the babies needs, as well as cook and clean your house a bit so you don’t have to.
Using The Parenting Skill To Your Advantage
If you have The Sims 4: Parenthood Game Pack installed, you’ll be able to use the parenting skill to improve your interactions with your babies as well as parent them easier.
When your sim reaches level 6 of the parenting skill, they will be able to see a little bubble pop up over a baby that will tell you exactly what is wrong with them so you can take care of their needs more quickly.
At level 10 of the parenting skill, your parent will be able to use super efficient baby care to take care of babies. This will get your sim to go over and do all baby interactions in quick succession and your baby will then be completely content for hours. This can be super valuable, especially if you have multiple kids and are busy. However, this can only be used once and had a cooling off period of a couple of hours.
Getting Your Baby Taken Away
If you fail to take care of your baby and they aren’t fed for a while, you’ll get a notification in the top right hand corner letting you know that they’re hungry.
” X is very hungry! Without a feeding soon, this baby will be taken away!”
If you continue to ignore your baby and decide not to feed them, you’re going to see your baby disappear into a haze of smoke and you’ll get another notification letting you know that they’ve been taken away.
“Due to neglect, X has been whisked away to safety. Maybe you should try a goldfish before parenting again.”
In previous Sim games, if you had a baby or child taken away you would no longer be able to adopt a child, but this is not the case in The Sims 4. So, if you do lose your baby… you could always get a new one? Silver living, I guess.
Aging Up Babies
There really isn’t much fun to be had by having babies in your household, they are rather boring to care for so a lot of players choose to just age them up and move on to toddler stages because they are more challenging.
You are able to age up a baby to a toddler at any moment after you give birth by simply clicking on the bassinet and choosing age up. Your adult sim will come over and age up the child, they will do a little spin, then you’ll be able to choose your toddler’s new trait.
If you’d rather just play it out, you can of course! It will take 3 days for your baby to age up with a normal lifespan which isn’t too long for you to take care of a baby, especially if you have the parenthood pack and a high parenting skill.
The longer you wait, the better your relationship will be with the baby when they age up. Having a good relationship with your toddlers helps you teach them easier and decreases the chances of them ignoring you.
Final Thoughts
I really hope that some day I can update this guide to have a more interesting way to care for babies in The Sims 4, since they really don’t have a lot of nuance to them. How do you feel about babies in the sims? Which game had your favourite babies? Let me know in the comments!