Weekly Update - It's Time for Early labor (Patreon)
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Hi guys! hope you all had a good week!
as promised this week I focused on working on the early labor part of the child birth mod. So far I was able to add an early labor stage successfully so that sims will go into early labor once they arrive at the hospital and wont give birth until they are fully dilated.
I also added Obstetrician to the hospital and they will be taking care of your sim during the birthing process.
After changing into the hospital gown, your sim will autonomously go to the hospital bed and lie down, that's where they will spend most of their time during early labor. you can still direct them to do things like using the toilet or eating, but they will always be drawn to going back and laying down.
nurses and obstetrician will come and talk to your sim occasionally during early labor
Obstetrician will sometimes perform checkups on your sim
During early labor you will still need to take care of your sims needs, I added the option to sleep on the hospital bed so that your sim will have a place to rest.
I also started working on the epidural animation and im about half way done, this is what it looks like right now
getting epidural is option, it will only be administered if you ask for it from the obstetrician.
Also, i was today years old when I learned epidural is actually inserting a tube into the epidural space around the spinal cord 😳 i thought its an anesthetic given solely by injecting with a syringe. This means I will need to make some adjustments on the animation, perhaps even adding an epidural tube and syringe that hangs around your sims shoulder so that you can administer it periodically during early labor.
I will also be making a yoga ball so that your sim can bring it with them and do exercises during early labor to help induce labor.
I am debating whether I should create a brand new hospital building similar to the one from private practice so that you can choose to use that hospital if you want to. The main reason I want to do this is because the layout for the currently hospital from get to work is not great for giving birth, your sim has to walk all the way across the building to use the washroom or get food, when ideally I want them to be able to do that in their own room with more privacy. I also want to make it so that taking hot bath will help ease the pain but there is no bathtub in the get to work hospital :/ I will have to look into what is needed to create a new hospital and see if its something I will be able to fit into the schedule I have right now.
next week I will focus on finishing the epidural animation, create the dilation system and the "check for dilation" animation, creating social interactions related to giving birth, and cleaning up any loose ends. hopefully I will come back with more good news next week!