I recently modded my pregnancy spans, and in my hood it now lasts 18 days. I really enjoy playing pregnant Sims, I think they are beautiful, so I wanted it to last long. But I find it's conflicting a bit with wanting to have some college-families, since that means a Sim would have to be pregnant as a teen or very early on as YA in order to have a baby before graduating, and even so it leaves very little time to play them as a family.

My mother works as a nurse with premature babies, and since entering med school I've had the privilege of being allowed to come along to observe and learn. Combined with wishing some babies would come quicker, this has got me thinking about adding premature births to my hood. Using InSim it's possible to make a Sim give birth on command, so I could roll a die to determine if a baby is born prematurely. But beyond that, I haven't really come up with anything. I wonder, does anyone else have something like this in their hood? How did you set it up? What are your rules? Are there any consequences to being born prematurely?

Once. Melody Tinker and Dirk Dreamer were in their last year of uni when Melody was pregnant and because of a mod conflict, she suddenly couldn't go to class, so when her final exam came, I forced her to give birth when she was only in her second trimester and then go to her exam straight after (poor woman). She gave birth to triplet boys, So I stretchskeletoned the babies and gave them little tubes on their first day of life, and after that pretended they were 'healthy sized' and got rid of the tubes the next day.

There should be, but you'll have to work to make them so. (Excuse me for going over things you know better than I do; I'm working this out in my head while typing.) Premature babies have a high infant mortality relative to mature babies, and need to make up the growth time they missed in the womb, so they appear to develop more slowly. (I don't know the degree to which this is an illusion caused by the baby having the wrong birthday and being compared to the wrong age cohort.) Both the conditions that caused the birth to be premature to begin with, and the stress of developing outside the womb when they should be in it, can cause health problems down the line. Some premature babies grow up to be normally healthy - especially if their families take extra care with them - while others are plagued with lifelong problems.

Ways to simulate this within the game mechanics might include delaying their growth to toddlers, editing their active points, and slowing their intellectual development compared to children born at the same time but conceived earlier. The specific ways you accomplish these things would hinge on how you play normal children. If you routinely hold birthday parties as soon as allowed and use career and aspiration rewards to accelerate their learning, just not doing those things would simulate the difference reasonably well. If you don't, you'd probably have to actively edit the character data.

For maximum realism, premature children should have a chance of dying before aging to toddler, but - emotional considerations aside - I think the only way to do that is the BBQ, which is hardly maximally realistic, and use of which requires a very specific player sensibility.

Technically I have a premature baby in Drama Acres, from when I was eradicating flu by quarantining and turning aging off in households that manifested it, playing till it cleared; but I just left aging off so the baby didn't grow up on the rotation expected, but will grow up in line with when he should be born. And that's probably all I'll do about it.

@Bigsimsfan12 did you age down Darren Dreamer to YA or do you mean Dirk Dreamer the teen.

Which ever one it is they make very cute babies.

I do it for story pictures and such, but not for regular gameplay (too much hassle). I also have some small deco babies I use for pictures, with tubes and wires and all that.

I started working on a baby scale (along with XPTL) that could set a weight for the baby, where one of the options could be premature - I thought it better than throwing a die or something. Never got as far as to get it out of testing mode, as it still needs a bit of work.

Thanks for the replies As always your hospital-scene pictures are impressively detailed, simmer22. I was planning to go over your creations, since I know you have a lot of hospital-themed stuff. I really like the feeding and oxygen tubes, they'll be perfect for this, since it's something it's reasonable that you'd find even on a baby that has gone home. Here's hoping I can find similar things for toddlers.

While death-risk is realistic, I really could not stomach the BBQ, so I think I'll leave that particular aspect of it. But some kind of slowed growth is a very good suggestion. Stretch skeleton is a lot of fiddling, but delaying growing up is easy enough. I think I'll also add a die-roll as kids, to see if they learn slower. And if they do, require a parent helping with homework for X days as a kid.

EDIT: I found your oxygen/feeding tubes for all ages, simmer22. I googled but didn't find, but now that I went through all your stuff I found them. Thanks for all the wonderful hospital-themed stuff you've made

ooops yes I meant Dirk Dreamer Good catch.

I also do not have those - life is realistic enough. So, to answer the question : fortunately not

I did once for a story using simmer22's deco premature babies. These days no, plus I have it modded so pregnancy only lasts 2 days to be more in line with how my sims age, 1 day = 6 months. Even though 2 days is a year I can get my head around sim pregnancy lasting 12 month rather than 18 months like an elephant.

This is an interesting idea! I don't have premature babies in my game, but I do have various other things to make the game more "realistic" - infertility, miscarriages, "intelligence levels" (calculated using a formula based on personality points, limits how much sims can skill without a want to do so) and so on. I may look into adding premature babies into the mix as well.

I would probably play them by delaying their growth into toddlers and giving them a shorter toddler lifestage (so they would be babies for an extra day and toddlers for less time), which would act to limit the amount that they could learn as toddlers anyway. And possibly also by removing a certain number of active points, which would also, according to the formula I use, affect their intelligence level. Perhaps (for some premature sims, or all?) over time I could restore their active points to the genetic levels, which would cause a (possible) change in intelligence level as well as just generally making them more active.

In my mind sims born as a result of alien abduction would be more likely to be premature (because males aren't exactly designed for carrying babies, right?), but it would be a possibility for all babies. I think that I would only let it happen sometime between the final "pop" and birth - so in the third trimester.

This requires more thought! :-)

That sounds like a lot of work, and me being the lazy biotch I am, don't really care for it :D
I don't think it's necessarily bad because it's *realistic*. I mean, I simulate horrible things like murders, sicknesses and murder-suicides in my game.
Never really had a miscarriage either in my game. Never even thought about it really, huh :o

While I've had some wonky age-ranges in my game... I don't think of any of the sims in question as having been "premature" or "past-due" or "...it's been in there for so long that the kid'll be able to walk out and get a job."

I wonder if it was because I was premature? (By six weeks.)

If you want realism, it should certainly not be all. And not necessarily decided by how early it is, either. Some babies are born in week 28 and have no troubles from it, others are born week 34 and have lots of trouble that affect them their whole life. Some friends of ours had twins born quite early who are now in their late teens, and they are approaching 2 meters in height and are both very talented. One academically, the other with more hands-on stuff. I'm still baffled every time I see them, because in my head they are still the tiny premie babies

Aw to me this seems sad... I'd just force the birth and let my sim babies be happy and healthy!