Non-Traditional Pregnancy in The Sims

A quick-and-dirty guide for gay or lesbian Sims to produce children through in-game methods, cheats and mods.

Pregnancy Basics

Barring cheats or mods, gay or lesbian Sims cannot produce children. They can adopt children, but do not get to experience the joys of morning sickness, cravings, incessant wishes, tossing baby showers (well, hosting parties where you can announce your pregnancy), and emergency trips to the delivery room. If you want your Sim to have those experiences, then you're going to have to go find a partner of the opposite sex. If you don't understand why, then have someone explain the birds and bees to you. That's outside the scope of this guide.

Lesbian couples will have an easier time getting pregnant within normal game mechanics and will also not have to go through the hassle of getting the baby into the household since the baby goes with the mother's household by default. For a gay couple, you'll can either go with the "Seasons" expansion pack or use more conventional methods and then jump through hoops to get the baby added to the household. With "Seasons," Male Sims can get abducted and impregnated by aliens. Probably not what you were wanting, but it can be done.

This means fnding another Sim is going to be the simplest route. Going outside the relationship isn't pretty and carries some other baggage, but it will get you most of what you want.

Step one: find a partner. You know, "when a boy and a girl really love each other..." Do we really have to go there? In this case, you're mainly concerned with looks. Managing your pregnancy well will let you pick your baby's initial traits, so it's only physical appearance and not personality that's influenced by the partner. So for those of you wanting a hunkster or babe-alicious and who couldn't care less if they have two synapses to rub together, this is your golden opportunity.

Step two: raise the relationship. Getting it to the point of being able to select "Try for baby" is the normal process. Your female Sim can also do it with someone whose relationship is high enough to be able to tour the theater together and you can make the attempt while you're backstage. This method might let you avoid all of the relationship baggage.

Male Sims can also use this backstage method, but since the female isn't under your control, you won't get to pick traits. If you're not going to add her to your household (you can kick her out later, you heartless beast), you might as well adopt. You'll get the same result either way.

Step three: do the deed. We're back to that birds and bees talk again and not going there. But the point is to get pregnant. Young Adults have an easier time of it than Adults, but Elder females cannot get pregnant. Since it's only a chance rather than a certainty, it might take a couple or three tries. If you want to immediately know whether you succeeded, try to Enroll in University (requires "University Life) or travel abroad (requires "World Adventures") from your smartphone. You can also try Skinny Dipping if you can find a pool without kids or teens on the lot. If you can Enroll, Travel, or Skinny Dip, you need to try again because pregnant Sims can't do any of those.

Step four: clean up the relationship mess. The "Clean Slate" Lifetime Reward will erase all of your Romantic Interests, excluding your current spouse, fiancee, or girlfriend/boyfriend since those are different than Romantic Interests (you might need to work on the Romance afterward, but you can think of that as a side benefit). If you do not do this, you will be dealing with "Cheater!" for the rest of your Sim's life.

Step five: enjoy the pregnancy.

Cheating

Cheating is the simplest way for a gay or lesbian couple to get pregnant, regardless of installed expansions.

1. Press Control + Shift + C to open the console
   
2. type "testingcheatsenabled true" (without quotes) and press Enter
   
3. Decide which of the partners is going to be the father and which will be the mother. For a gay couple, you'll be working with the mother; for a lesbian couple, you'll be working with the father.
   
4. Shift-click on the Sim. If you've done everything correctly, you'll have "Edit in Create a Sim" as an available option.
   
5. From the Basics menu, change their sex. You can also change their name to something more appropriate if you want, but it's not strictly necessary.
   
6. save and exit (click the checkmark)

Here we go with one of my Sims
Go into Create-a-Sim:


Change the sex:


Save and exit:


Note that it takes a little bit (a minute or less) for the control panel images to update.

Where you had a gay or lebian couple, you now have a straight couple and can head off to "Try for Baby" as often as you'd like. The only thing that has changed is the Sim's sex and outward appearance. All of their relationships, skills, rewards, traits, career, and so forth are untouched.

If you're going to leave them in this state for a while, you might want to go mess with their outfits, makeup, hair styles and such. But the feature shapes (face, eyes, nose, mouth) and the positions of the advanced sliders have not changed their settings (yes, your newly male Sim still has a setting for bust size - it's just not being used).

For example, If your Sim's facial shape was set to the right-hand of the third row (with any changes you might have made to the Advanced sliders), it stays with that and only changes to what those choices look like for the opposite sex. It's still the facial shape on the right in the third row or the nose on the left in the fourth row and will go back to its original appearance when you're ready.

When this Sim's part of the operation is done, putting them back to their original appearance shouldn't involve anything more than changing their sex (and possibly their name) and then recreating the outfits, hairstyles and makeup.

Back into Create-a-Sim:


Change the sex back:


Save and exit:


Please note that once a female Sim is pregnant, you cannot edit her in Create a Sim again until the pregnancy finishes.

Enjoy your pregnancy.

Mods

The best mod I've tried is the Master Controller mod from Nraas Industries (Google it). You'll need the Master Controller, Master Controller Cheats and a correctly formatted Resources.cfg file. If you don't already have one, just download it from Nraas; it's a plain text file. The installation instructions are simple and straightforward: drop the .package file into the appropriate folder, make sure that your Resources.cfg file is correct and you're ready. If you have no idea what all of that means, just use the link to the Installation Instructions. Won't take you more than about 5 minutes to download and set up everything.

These two mods give very granular control over almost everything in the game, so you might want to bookmark the documentation for later reference as I do not recommend trying to read it all in one sitting. What we want to do is dirt simple, so don't panic.

Once the mods are installed, fire up your game (you'll get a popup in the launcher that tells you they have successfully loaded) and then load your save.

1. Click on the Sim that you want to be the mother and select Nraas.
   
2. Select Master Controller
   
3. Select "Basic" from the new menu
   
4. Select "Pollinate" (gee, I guess we did have to do the birds and bees thing after all)
   
5. Close the next pop-up (hit the X at the bottom)
   
6. Select the father. The list includes the whole town in alphabetical order, but you can sort by relationship level. Click the checkmark at the bottom when you have made your selection.

Congratulations! You're pregnant by whoever you chose. Enjoy your pregnancy

If you'd like to repeat the process for your other Sim, you can enjoy both of you being pregnant and rest easy in the knowledge that you'll soon be juggling multiple babies at the same time (up to six are possible if you both hit the jackpot).

"No screenie, no proof," as they say. I used the "Pollinate" function on two Sims at about the same time. Both showed as pregnant when I tried to Enroll in University, so I know it there are buns in the oven. The only hiccup I encountered was that Judith (Betty's Girlfriend) somehow turned into Betty's Daughter for a while and then went to being a Romantic Interest. No idea why or how that happened, but it straightened itself out after a night in separate beds. I had to Propose Going Steady again to get everything back to the way it was.



They switched to maternity outfits within 30 minutes of each other (Sim time). I think we're going to need a bigger nursery.



And after two more days of catering to cravings and wishes, we find ourselves heading for the delivery room within 30 minutes of each other. Some serious confusion at the hospital with both Betty and Judith trying to "Be with Mother" rather than "Have Baby at Hospital", but it all worked out and home they went. Betty got her wish to have a boy (even though she delivered a girl) and Judith got her wish to have a girl (even though she delivered a boy).

Candace was born first:


John was born second, about 15 or 20 minutes later:


And no sooner do they get home and put both of the young 'uns into their cribs than


I think it was Carol Burnett who described the experience of delivery as being somewhat like trying to pull your lip over the top of your head. "Can we go on that ride again?"

[MegaMedley]

How to reproduce as gay couple:
1. Divorce
2. Meet new Sim of opposite sex
3. Reproduce
4. :D

[Jackie Daytona]

You can engineer a baby to be the biological offspring of a same-sex couple in the Future.

[Rayne]

And best of all, no 2-day-pregnancy-period and all the negatives that come with it!

[Rayne]

Yeah, you go to the future, head to the hospital with your partner, select randomise baby for random traits, gender, eye colour, hair colour and other features, or customise baby, which lets you pick eye colour, hair colour, traits, and gender of the baby. It takes a few hours to generate the baby but you can pick the name of the baby regardless of whether you customised or randomised the baby. Unfortunately you can't cherry-pick the baby's genes but it's the next best thing!

[marstinson]

@icey rayne: I didn't include that scenario because I have not done it, but you're right; the Into the Future expansion includes custom engineering a baby. Because I haven't done it, I'm working from memory on some of the mechanics as reported by other players, but I think you go to the Science facility (might be Hospital), set everything up, and walk out with your new baby.

[Rayne]

I don't think this has been mentioned but another way for non-traditional pregnancy (without the use of any mods at all) is by way of engineering a baby in the future (must have Into The Future EP for this) and you can either randomise or custom engineer a baby. If you select custom engineer, you can select hair and eye colour, the baby's gender and its first two traits

[trustad]

cool

[marstinson]

@trustad: sure. That's pretty much what the developers had in mind when dealing with same-sex families. It allows them to be parents, enjoy the same interactions (minus the back pains and cravings that go with pregnancy), and still keep the "T for Teen" rating. But like most games, the players sometimes want to do things that the developers hadn't provided for, so mods and guides like this one tend to show up to fill that void.

[trustad]

you can adopt if you call services

[marstinson]

There is another NRaas mod (Woohooer) that I had not played around with at the time I wrote this. But it makes same-sex pregnancy much simpler. It's does a few things that the developers had completely barred from the game (like pregnant teens), so some settings will have their own set of hiccups and quirks. But on the whole, it lets consenting adults do their thing with any other consenting adult (and they will - be careful with the autonomy).