The Sims games are all about the cycle of life. Growing up from a child, surviving adulthood and then passing away happily are just some of the general goals of the games. However, while The Sims 4 has tons of rich and immersive mechanics that help you build your ideal family, that hasn't always been the case. There was actually a time in the game where Sims wouldn't even experience pregnancy, and taking care of a baby or a child was quite a bit of work. The franchise has come a long way from its early days, especially when it comes to babies and how much they've evolved. Let's have a look at the complete history of Sims babies.

10 Used To Grow To Children

Those who played The Sims back in the day will know that there were only two different ages available for gameplay: child and adult. Babies were a third life stage, but they weren't exactly controllable, until they would grow up to become children. Teenagers, elders, or young adults were not a thing. Most importantly, toddlers were definitely not a thing, which meant there was an awkward transition from a small baby inside a crib into a fully grown young child. Who else remembers breathing a sigh of relief when their baby finally grew up and didn't cry every six hours?

9 "Should We Have A Baby?"

Not only would babies grow straight into children back in the day, the process of actually getting pregnant was also quite bizarre. You'd have to perform enough romantic interactions with another Sim until a dialogue box would appear asking you whether you wanted a baby or not. That's it!

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No planning or guessing needed, just a simple "yes" or "no" answer and the baby crib would pop up in your house. Alternatively, if you had the infamous vibrating heart bed from Hot Date, you could interact with it and experience the same dialogue to get yourself a baby.

8 Babies Were Objects

This might come as a big shock to a lot of people here, but babies were actually not even real Sims. They were considered objects by the game itself. There was no way of telling what the baby's gender, appearance, or personality would be like before they'd actually grow up. The genetics would be fully randomized, too. Worse yet, if you decided to evict a family from a lot where they had a baby in a crib, the baby would not get transported to the new lot with them. How messed up is that, losing your newborn baby because you want to move houses!

7 Became Separate Mini Sims

Thankfully, The Sims 2 made great strides in realism and really revolutionized the whole baby aspect of the game. Babies were no longer just objects you could lose, but actual mini Sims that would appear in your family bar. Now, granted, you couldn't click on their portrait, which meant you had to guess whether the baby was hungry or tired or needed a diaper change. Moreover, babies couldn't be controlled like regular Sims, but acted more as dependent mini Sims requiring supervision. Quite close to reality, in other words!

6 Realistic Pregnancy

Another huge baby-related change came in the form of actual pregnancy in The Sims 2. Previously a crib would simply pop into your house after a simple dialogue, but now you'd actually have to plan things out a bit. Romantic interactions in bed didn't always guarantee pregnancy for your Sim.

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Once they would, however, become pregnant, their belly would grow by the end of their pregnancy and they would experience some morning sickness. The best part about all of this? Genetics. Although all babies look the same, once they grew up they had unique genetics inherited from parents.

5 Gendered Outfits & Blankets

The Sims 3 added a few more quality of life changes to babies. Their appearance was very similar to The Sims 2, but now you could actually get a bit more information about your child. Depending on the gender of your child, their wrappings would have a different color. This same indicator was transferred over to The Sims 4, where girls would have different outfits from boys. It's a nice indicator for sure, but for a game so set on diversity, it seems a bit old-fashioned to color code baby outfits and blankets.

4 Baby Traits & Open Needs

The Sims 3 also opened up the profile for babies, allowing players to see their moodlets and all their needs. It was no longer necessary to guess or to have your Sims learn the parenting skill to better predict what their children needed. While it definitely made things a lot easier, there was a certain amount of healthy challenge in having inaccessible baby needs. Another great change was being able to give your baby traits based on how good the mother's pregnancy had been. The better, the more traits you could pick, but if they had a stressful pregnancy the game would randomize the traits and tend to give the baby more negative personality traits.

3 Breastfeeding Introduced

It's hard to believe this is the case, but it took until The Sims 4 for developers to introduce actual breastfeeding. Prior to this mechanic, babies could only be given bottles for feeding, which was a weird choice for a game that's so focused on diversity and acceptance.

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Although the fact that the game blurs out the interaction to this day has caused a bit of controversy among some of the older Simmers, we're just glad that the mechanic even exists in the first place, since it was about time it got introduced anyway.

2 Different Cribs For Different Life States

Another cool detail that The Sims 4 introduced was personalized cribs for different life states. Aside from mermaids that surprisingly don't have their own little crib, all three other life states have their own little versions of the classic crib. Aliens get a bulky white pod, vampires have a gothic, traditional style baby bed and spellcasters get a very fancy art nouveau style crib. This doesn't really have any bearing on the gameplay itself but it's just a nice little detail that brings a bit of color and personality to the babies themselves.

1 Still Not Available In CAS

The Sims 2 babies rest

So far on this list, we've talked about all the different changes that have affected babies and pregnancy. However, would you believe that there's one thing that has remained a constant throughout the series? To this day, the game doesn't allow you to create babies in the Create-A-Sim mode. There's been some debate over this design choice. Namely, babies don't remain babies for that long, and since their gameplay is very limited, it might not really make sense to have them as an option. Then again, you never know until you give Simmers the choice to try something new out, so maybe The Sims 5 will open a new opportunity.

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