false alarms

July 2086. Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 26.


Stephanie felt like she had been pregnant literally forever. While she would have loved for this pregnancy to be over and to meet her little bub, she was only thirty-five weeks along and it wasn't quite time yet. Soon it would be time, but not yet.


But something felt really wrong.


Justin was already on his way home from work when she called him in a panic, so it didn't take long for him to return home to her.

"I can’t tell if that was a contraction or if it was just gas," she said.

"How can you not tell?"

"I can’t remember if I had beans for lunch."

"Think really really hard. Did you have beans for lunch?"

"Oh no, I didn’t have beans. I had ice cream for lunch."


Stephanie cataloged every pregnancy complication she could think of in her head while Justin made some phone calls. He called her doctor first, and then he called his mom over to watch the girls because they were ordered to go to the hospital right away.


It was nearly midnight by the time they checked in.


Right away, Stephanie's doctor noticed that her blood pressure was dangerously high and that she'd gained six pounds since her last visit.


"I didn't eat that much ice cream," Stephanie said.

"No, it's not fat," her doctor explained. "It's probably swelling. And the pains you felt were probably your kidneys, not labor pains."

"What's wrong with my kidneys?"

"Hopefully nothing yet. But let's run some tests and take a urine sample, and we'll monitor the baby's heart rate for a little while to make sure he's not in distress. Then we'll decide what to do from there."

Dr. Avila wrapped Stephanie's belly in a fetal heart monitor and checked Stephanie's vitals, too.

Justin asked, "What is that sound? Where does that cord go? Is that number normal? Why did that beep stop?"

"Just relax," the doctor said.


So Justin pretended to relax, but it was absolutely impossible to relax.


Stephanie was too nervous to pee, so it took her fifteen minutes and several drinks from the bathroom sink, while she sat there regretting the ice cream maker that they'd swiped from her parents house.


The baby's heartbeat looked fine, but they would stay overnight to be closely monitored. There would be some more tests in the morning, but for now, they should just try to rest.


Justin couldn't sleep. He called his mom to check in at the first light of morning, even though he didn't have a diagnosis to tell her yet.


He read the only book in the waiting room, which was a saucy romance novel about a preacher’s daughter and her lonesome rogue.


He called Stephanie's parents, too, since they had no idea what was going on.

"No, no need to come," he said. "The doctors don't seem too alarmed yet."


He surveyed the kitchenette and didn't find anything too appealing to eat.


He returned to Stephanie's bedside and tried to think of what he should have done differently to prepare for this. Stephanie's pregnancy had been so healthy and uncomplicated up to this point that he hadn't even seen this coming. And because he hadn't seen this coming, he now felt vulnerable and unprepared for whatever other problems he might not see coming. He felt like their whole world could be taken away from them at the slightest wrong turn.


Dr. Avila came back around eight in the morning, looking chipper and frustratingly calm. "I'll have a nurse bring some breakfast in, and then we'll go over your test results."


It was not the most comfortable sleep Stephanie ever had.


By the time Stephanie woke, Justin had it all planned out. He would ask his mom to stay with her until he could petition his boss for emergency family leave. He was on good standing with his boss, so he'd probably be approved. If not now, then soon. He promised her that everything would be okay and that they'd get through this together.

Stephanie sipped on some orange juice and took a few reluctant bites of her fruit salad. She wondered, statistically, how many times could he promise that everything would be okay before something ended up very much not okay?


Dr. Avila returned after Stephanie finished her breakfast. "It was as I suspected. The protein levels in your urine suggest an onset of mild pre-eclampsia."

"That sounds bad," Stephanie said.

"It's a very serious condition. But with careful monitoring, I am confident that both you and the baby will be just fine."

"How do I get rid of it?"

"There's no way to get rid of it except to deliver your baby. But let's try to keep him in there as long as we can. Even two weeks would do wonders for his development. If the condition worsens or begins to cause distress to either of you, then we'll induce labor. Until then, you'll be on bedrest. Try to keep your stress levels down and I'll prescribe some dietary supplements. I'd like to see you twice a week to make sure the condition doesn't get worse and you'll contact me immediately if you feel any changes."

"But I have a court date next week. What am I supposed to do?"

"Court will probably be fine if you rest all morning and come straight home afterwards. Just make sure you have somewhere comfortable to sit and try to keep your stress levels down."

"You haven't met my ex-husband," Stephanie said.

And with that, Stephanie dressed and Justin took her home to let the baby bake for a couple weeks more.

—

notes: this update was not originally intended for this story, but then my mods broke with the most recent EP and put her into labor unexpectedly! Oops. I managed to exit out before the baby actually came, because it's just not time for that quite yet! And now my mods are all in working order again, so I have her on bedrest and watchfulness.

But I also wanted to test out my hospital lot and they were being so adorable with their expressions. So I ran with the story. ;)

I have two more chapters to post, then the baby is welcome to come as soon as he likes.

I know it's kind of absurd to be telling this story about Stephanie's baby coming "early" when she has actually been pregnant for so damn long in real life time, lol! 

—

Gameplay notes on pregnancy complications:

This situation gave me a lot to think about in terms of gameplay (and I really look forward to doing lots more actual gameplay once this story is complete!) So what might be the consequences of preterm birth for a sim? This is, um, sort of dark, I guess. But with the health rolls that I'm using, and another pregnancy roll that I've since developed, I wanted there to be some lasting consequences for an early birth (not necessarily all tragic ones) or else why have it happen at all?

So this is what I came up with based lightly on some quickie internet research. Things that are both realistic and enforceable within the game. Full term starts at 37 weeks, by the way.

born week 35-36
- minus 1" genetic height
- minus 5 years from genetic glasses roll

born week 33-34
- minus 1" genetic height
- minus 10 years from genetic glasses roll
- learning or behavioral difficulties trait

born week 31-32
- 1 health strike
- minus 2" genetic height
- minus 20 years from genetic glasses roll
- learning or behavioral difficulties trait

born before 31 weeks
- same as above, plus a chance that the baby doesn't make it :(

All babies born after 31 weeks will be fine with lots of medical care.

I've only ever had one sim-baby born before 33 weeks, which was Bella's youngest, Ophelia, born at about 32 weeks. And she does have one health strike, which she's had since birth, although that was part of her birth roll and not because she was a preemie. If I had been doing this chart, she would have had two, but I'm going to let her slide with just the one. Any future babies will get what they get though.

I don't know of any TS4 mods that cause a chance of miscarriage or preterm birth, so instead, my sims are subject to ROS rolls for those things. The roll determines whether the pregnancy is viable or not and whether there might be any complications. I do this roll as soon as the sim conceives. (Stephanie's roll for her pregnancy was healthy and normal, by the way.) The pregnancy roll that I use is pretty simple, and the results look like this:


Using Blossom as an example. This pregnancy is healthy and viable for her, so no risk of miscarriage. (I sort of prefer this way to determine miscarriage, since IRL it's usually caused by a random genetic fluke and rarely anything the mother could do or not do.) Then, a second higher risk roll for women who have had a miscarriage before and are more likely to have another.

Blossom, here, rolled to have complications at 38 weeks. The ROS doesn't say what kind of complications, but that's something I'll decide according to what makes sense for her story and condition at the time, and that could be as simple or complex as I feel like doing for the story.

So, when exactly the baby is born will have a little to do with whether they've rolled to have complications or not. Perhaps Blossom will need an emergency c-section at 38 weeks for some reason. (It could give me a reason to use that ridiculous pregnancy extractor at the hospital, lol!) Or, like what happened to Stephanie, a game update or mod mishap might send someone into labor unexpectedly. Or, what happened to Bella in my TS2 game that caused Ophelia to come so early, I just sort of lost track of how long I'd played her and pushed her into labor too soon. Oops!

She will have to be in labor for 18 hours before she can either click to "have baby" either at home or at the hospital. Whew, that's a long labor! Perhaps that'll be why she ends up having a c-section. I'm already writing the story for it, lol!

I don't know about you guys, but after so many years of simming, I just kind of want these pregnancies and births to have a little more unexpected variety. Not tragedy, necessarily, just variety, which is terribly lacking in TS4 at least. Pregnant sims can't even die in this game! 0_0