Choosing Sex of Babies

[Zazazu]

That means you can't eat fruit parfait, french toast, or eggs machiavellian. It's also possible that either or could be in pancakes or PB&J. Five meals that are effectively banned from pregnant women if you don't want sex determined, leaving only cereal (quick meal) or waffles for breakfast. That seems...terribly restrictive.

[rufio]

Well, you could always make everything with grapes.

[LauraW]

So avoid apples and watermelon. Eat only fish or something and it should still be random.

As far as I know, my sim did not eat apples or watermelon with the first 5 pregnancies so therefore, it appears that the sim will have boys UNLESS they eat watermelon. So avoiding apples doesn't do it.

[Tsarina]

Gender in TS3 appears to be somewhat more controllable than in TS2: There's a cheesecake effect at work. Eating foods containing "watermelon" increases the chance of females, eating foods containing "apple" increases males.

By how much? Would the effect of eating a watermelon be cancelled by eating an apple?

As far as I know, my sim did not eat apples or watermelon with the first 5 pregnancies so therefore, it appears that the sim will have boys UNLESS they eat watermelon. So avoiding apples doesn't do it.

This could be sadorandom. If you eat neither apples nor watermelon, you'd have a 50/50 chance. It is possible that the same gender was rolled 5 times in a row. In order to verify that claim, you'd have to make your sim go through a lot more pregnancies.

Btw, this whole balls/apples/eggs thing reminds me of a Russian saying that goes: "For a bad dancer, even his own eggs get in the way."
I can't help but lol when I hear it.

[iHateyou]

That means you can't eat fruit parfait, french toast, or eggs machiavellian. It's also possible that either or could be in pancakes or PB&J. Five meals that are effectively banned from pregnant women if you don't want sex determined, leaving only cereal (quick meal) or waffles for breakfast. That seems...terribly restrictive.

It is restrictive, but it's only for a few days. I also think we need to know more about how it works, because there are lots of good questions being raised in this thread. You can also try just not having any apples or watermelon in the fridge, but have other fruit and that should allow you to make any recipe that is just "fruit" and not specifically apple or watermelon.

[LauraW]

Tsarina, it is not a scientific experiment with a control group and all that..and it could simply be random. But if not, its silly and I want it to go away! Of course, I want girls because the townie girls are so ugly and I am tired of trying to find suitable mates for my boys. So I will probably keep on having them eat watermelon because I am weak.

[Tsarina]

Tsarina, it is not a scientific experiment with a control group and all that..and it could simply be random.

This was exactly my point. Since it's not a scientific experiment, you can't say that avoiding apples won't work.

Personally, I'm not too keen on the idea of ANY kind of food influencing the baby's sex. Urgh. I like random.

[Lurker]

That means you can't eat fruit parfait, french toast, or eggs machiavellian. It's also possible that either or could be in pancakes or PB&J.

I confirm the pancakes, one of my sims has it as his favorite food and he keeps cooking apple pancakes.

Five meals that are effectively banned from pregnant women if you don't want sex determined, leaving only cereal (quick meal) or waffles for breakfast. That seems...terribly restrictive.

Add also deserts. Haven't seen them all but there's cookies and lime pie. These won't have any apple or watermelon added.

[Zazazu]

Yes...one of my sims is a Master cook and knows all recipes. I said it was possible for pancakes or PB&J to include apples because both use generic fruit. It's been my experience that pancakes almost always get apples if they are available. Fruit parfait and french toast list apples specifically as an ingredient. Eggs machiavellian list watermelon.

I totally forgot about the desserts. Those should be safe except for cobbler, which includes a generic fruit. Of course you can manipulate the fridge to have no apples or watermelons and stock it with other fruits, still avoiding the specific recipes (which should then cost you simoleons).

I find myself wishing it was something not as easily obtained, though, so that gender specification couldn't be accidental. Flame fruits would be good...you can only get those through harvesting (they are in baked angel food cake and can be used as a generic fruit).

[daisywenham]

I find myself wishing it was something not as easily obtained, though, so that gender specification couldn't be accidental. Flame fruits would be good...you can only get those through harvesting (they are in baked angel food cake and can be used as a generic fruit).

Seriously.  It seems backwards to me.  The gender of a baby gets artificially influenced without any input from the player at all but you have to jump through hoops to get it to be random?

[Trinity]

I have been experimenting with apples/watermelons and it seems that they do give the chance of a certain sex being born. First I had the female sim eat nothing, I bumped up her motives by cheating, she had five children 2 boys and 3 girls. Second time I had her eat nothing but apples, both raw and made into recipes, this resulted in 5 boys. Third time the sim ate nothing but watermelon, raw and cooked into recipes, this resulted in all girls so far.

For the watermelon test, I gave the father the fertility treatment during the third pregnancy, the day after the female started showing, and they had twins. The fourth pregnancy resulted in twins also, the fifth is still in progress. All previous pregnancies were single babies. Is the number of babies determined at time of birth or time of conception?

[Scotty]

I don't think I'm going to mess with kids this time around. They were a pain in TS1 and TS2. I just don't want to deal with the little ankle-biters in TS3.

[Mimisims]

As far as I know, my sim did not eat apples or watermelon with the first 5 pregnancies so therefore, it appears that the sim will have boys UNLESS they eat watermelon. So avoiding apples doesn't do it.
[/quote]

That can't be correct.  My Sim had a girl before and after my game crash (same pregnancy, the first birth was just lost when the game crashed) and she has never eaten watermelons at all.  She's grown them in the garden, but so far I haven't had her eat them.  Her pregancy wasn't affected by any foods really, because like I said earlier, I mostly used the cheat to keep all her motives leveled up and therefore she ate waffles one time and the "goopy" meal one time.  She hasn't even eaten apples or watermelons before she was pregnant.  She has had pancakes before she was pregnant though.

[Roflganger]

I don't think I'm going to mess with kids this time around. They were a pain in TS1 and TS2. I just don't want to deal with the little ankle-biters in TS3.

I find them to be less of a pain in TS3 because you can age the infants up pretty much immediately by buying a birthday cake.  In fact, and I suspect this is a fact that quite a few people haven't discovered yet, you can age anyone up at any point in time by buying a birthday cake and clicking "Blow out candles".  You will get a list of every Sim currently in the house, including friends, neighbors and countrymen, and you can just select whichever person it is you want to age up.

Kids are definitely better, IMO.  They do homework autonomously, will go to friend's houses after school, and generally seem to take pretty good care of themselves.

[daisywenham]

Toddlers are definitely much easier to deal with now.  If I have a toddler in the yellow, all I have to do is cancel out the queue of one sim and they will go see to the kid after a few seconds.  There is of course still the issue with every sim in the house who is a teen or older trying to change the same kid's diaper at the same time if they're not otherwise occupied.

[Zazazu]

I don't think I'm going to mess with kids this time around. They were a pain in TS1 and TS2. I just don't want to deal with the little ankle-biters in TS3.

I find them to be less of a pain in TS3 because you can age the infants up pretty much immediately by buying a birthday cake.  In fact, and I suspect this is a fact that quite a few people haven't discovered yet, you can age anyone up at any point in time by buying a birthday cake and clicking "Blow out candles".  You will get a list of every Sim currently in the house, including friends, neighbors and countrymen, and you can just select whichever person it is you want to age up.

Early age-up is great, and not much of a problem if you always randomize the traits like I do. If your toddler isn't seen to have developed enough, the game rolls for you. Other than that, yes, babies and toddlers are a total pain in the ass, much worse than TS2. They can't even sleep fully without going into hunger or social failure. I've resorted to cheating their motives up during the night.

[Quill]

So is it possible to have twins/triplets that aren't all of the same gender?  So far, I've only seen reports of all boys/all girls.  Anyone have a mixed batch?  It seems stupid to not be able to have fraternal twins. 

[iHateyou]

So is it possible to have twins/triplets that aren't all of the same gender?  So far, I've only seen reports of all boys/all girls.  Anyone have a mixed batch?  It seems stupid to not be able to have fraternal twins. 

I have not had mixed genders, but I have had what must be fraternal girl twins because they were not at all identical.

[mappam]

Has anyone found a food that will help in having multiples. A "cheesecake" type item?

[Mikkey]

Has anyone found a food that will help in having multiples. A "cheesecake" type item?

I read that watching the kid channel while pregnant may result in multiples. Or get the fertility treatment but I wouldn't recommend it if you plan another pregnancy after that one, all you'll get is twins and triplets

[tides]

if the wife and husband both have the fertility treatment, tripliets is 100% guranteed so your family will multiply like acursed ants!!

[Mimisims]

I got the fertility reward for Agnes Crumplebottom because I wanted to make sure she had a baby (when I was trying for a ghost baby).  It did not cause her to have multiple births.  She did not eat apples or watermelons, as I was too busy cheating her motives to keep them up.  I did feed her spaghetti once because she wished for it - don't think that has in fruit in it, but with this game, who knows?  Anyway, she has now had two boys in a row - one normal and one ghost.  (What fruit does french toast have in it, cuz she did eat that during the second pregnancy?)  I'm going to try for a third time tonight before I uninstall this version to install my storebought one tomorrow.

[Roflganger]

if the wife and husband both have the fertility treatment, tripliets is 100% guranteed so your family will multiply like acursed ants!!

Wrong.  2 Sims with Fertility Treatment are perfectly capable of producing twins, and I'd wager that they could even have singles. 

[crunk]

There is still the cap of 8 sims in a household, so sims with the fertility treatment perk are limited to six kids at home at a time. Someone could try stuffing the house with random roommate types to try to prevent spawning while other families were being played.

[zepheera]

I've gotten singles, twins, AND triplets when both of the (same) parents had the fertility reward, it's still random, but it looks like the chance of multiples increases for each parent that has it.   I've also bred several different pregnancies trying out the apples and watermelons theory, and I've had several boys on a watermelon only diet, as well as girls on the apple diet, and vice versa.

I have, however, never had a mixed gender multiple birth, and I'm pretty sure that's a bug that EAxis didn't fix before release.