More Awesome Than You!

I had a serious problem with a pregnant Cassandra Goth the other night. Both her energy and hunger were getting low, so I tried to make her drink some espresso to get her energy up so that she could then eat something. But apparently her energy was too low even for that, because she kept putting the cup down only after one or two sips. Then I tried to sit her at a table to eat, but after each bite she kept falling face first into the plate and start sleeping, with her hunger bar getting lower and lower all the time. It seemed, the hunger was going down faster than she could eat. Finally I got her up, and at that point she just fell down on the floor asleep. I let her sleep to let her energy go up enough to walk upstairs to a bedroom and then wait until her energy was high enough to stay awake while eating.

I'm saying the new addition of falling asleep while eating can be very dangerous in cases like there, when a sim is both very tired and hungry. Certainly quite annoying when it happened ten times in a row. The guide says something like "when a sim is very tired, there is a random chance they will fall asleep in their food". Well, we all know Maxis "random". The kind of random that happens ten times in a row  :D.

Yes, that random feature seems to be broken (surprise, surprise  ::)), because it used to be that my Sim could be in orange, but still eat enough, and then go to bed.  Not so anymore.  Stupid Maxis.

I've always had issues with the too tired to eat, to hungry to sleep thing.  Freakin annoying. Even more so now with the fall asleep in your plate feature.  I wonder if any modders can tackle that whole issue of sims sleeping in their food.

What I usually do when this happens with my pregnant sims is put the game in fast forward and continue to cancel out the pass out in food action until they get enough bites that they aren't going to kill over and then send them to bed.

In an emergency such as that, I just "maxmotives".   It's a cheat I know, but it's better than having the mum and baby die.   I don't like the falling asleep in food thing either, it's a gimmick and it kicks in earlier than normal energy failure just to make sure it happens.   Like most of the novel gimmicks, they get annoying after a while and need hacking out.

Get them to eat cookies or chips instead, they don't fall asleep at the table with them :)

Exellent advise, Inge - just what I thought: why torture the sim? Max all motives, and then take care to keep his/her schedule right. The simulator  shows you, that you don't keep the pregnant sim in the right schedule, that's why you get motives failure. The pregnant sim has to eat each 2 hours, and rest or nap after that. When I played without cheats, that was my schedule.

Mine have the habit of taking a few bites of snacks which is barely enough to make an impact on the hunger meter...setting them down and then passing out :(

Aww-well there is always the energiser if the aspiration score is high enough :)

I may have to resort to the max motives cheat if this keeps happening, but I'm really trying to avoid any mood or relationship cheats. I like a challenge, but keeping pregnant sims alive is getting a bit too challenging now, though  :D. I guess I should just make sure they are not hungry by the the time they get tired, but I wasn't paying enough attention to Cassandra when there was other stuff going on in the house.

I had the same thing with a pregnant Kaylynn last night. Even caffeinating didn't work, as she was drinking the coffee, her energy was going up (slowly) and her tiredness was making the energy go down. I watched the bar jerking around for a while but it didn't work, she couldn't get enough energy to eat that way.

This is probably even less likely to suit you, but there is also the possibility of giving the pregnant mother the PY2Plant and keeping her hunger maxed - leaving everyone else and all other motives untouched.

Heh, I remember when I had a problem like that.   :-\ The poor pregnant women was all in the red since she had four kids, and three were toddlers and her mother-in-law had just died, so it was her and her husband with their four kids, anyway, she ended up being very in the red. I got her some snacks, but she kept passing out. I confined her to the bedroom, and put a mini-fridge in there. When she was a little bit happier in the hunger and energy department, I tried to get her on a date with her husband.

Anyway, to keep a long story short, she ended up peeing herself. Which pushed the date into insta-horrible zone which caused the date to end and deplete her moods...her husband had to plead for her :-p

I just have a flamingo of contentment on every lot!  So I never even noticed Maxis had made it even worse for pregnant soms!  And I don't feel at that level it's all that much of a cheat - it's just making the game a bit more sensible!

Y'all just suck at this and make up excuses to justify having to cheat. The pure and simple answer is that you suck. Besides, sometimes sims are supposed to die.

But not ALL of them!  At once!

Well, I haven't cheated yet... ::) But one of these days I wish one of my sims would die by accident. Just for something new, y'know. Yeah, and we know we all suck. We can't all be as awesome as you Pescado  :P

My game is my game and I play it the way it suits me - as I'm sure everyone else plays to suit them!

And where exactly does a hack stop being a hack and start being a cheat?  If you want to be utterly pedantic, you could argue that anything  that alters the play as supplied by Maxis is a form of cheating!

I don't play the sims, my sims play me!  ;D

Which is supposed to stop me from pointing and laughing at you, why?

Technically, the game doesn't play as supplied by Maxis. It's kind of, you know, broken. See "Critical Fixes".

I played for a long time without any critical fixes, or any other hacks of any description.

And JM, don't tell me you PLAY your game - you RULE your sims with a rod of iron!  No doubt you rip their lips if they dare to answer you back! ;D

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Well, I already admitted I should have been paying better attention to Cassandra before letting things get so bad, but regardless of that, it's very annoying to have your sim fall asleep in their food repeatedly. So, yes, I sucked for letting her go hungry and tired for so long. Even the best of us slip sometimes  ;).

I generally use hacks that either fix problems or serious annoyances in the game. I don't use anything that makes the game easier, unless you consider sims spending less time looking for an empty surface for a coffee cup cheating. Using anything that maximizes their mood, skills or relationships doesn't appeal to me. I don't even like the built-in "Maxis cheat objects" that make their mood better or help them learn skills faster. No Smart Milk for my toddlers. If anything, I want to make it more challenging, like using the "no 20k handout" hack. Nothing like Mary-Sue Pleasant moving out with a whopping 600 simoleans.

Well, I am a sucky cheater.  I play like Gali a lot.  Testing cheats on and I'm always dragging their motive bars back up.  I like the interactions.  I don't play the game to make it hard.  If I want a Challenge, I"ll go play King Kong or something.  That is a cwieberdink sort of sucky wimpy way to play and why I will NEVER be able to steal Blue's thunder.   ;)

C

Unlike generous Gali, I don't cheat to make my Sims' lives easier, I do it for me.  For example, if I want to see what happens when this sim and that sim get in the hot tub together, and one of them keeps getting out because their hygeine is low or something, then I cheat him green so I can play the aspect of the game I wanted to play at the time.   When I first get each EP then I do play the challenges as designed at least a couple of times, after that I freewheel.

I've noticed that since NL they'll go forever without eating, especially if they have a 3-bolt relationship, because of course we all know it's far more important to have endless pillow-fights with one's true love than eat or anything trivial like that.  With pregnant Sims I have a problem because once their hunger bar gets about halfway down, the Inteen miscarriage risk kicks in, which means I have to constantly force them to eat and they have very little time to do much else.  

As for this problem with the coffee, I've noticed this too and I wondered if something wasn't working properly.  It only seems to happen with the espresso as far as I can see.

I had to uninstall inTeenimator cos I found the miscarriage thing too upsetting.  I don't mean the fact of losing the baby, but how long the poor mother went on feeling distressed for.  It was too serious feeling for a game I play for pleasure.

I agree! I am outrageous cheater, and I don't feel guilty at all. I am happy when my sims are happy, and I cry, when they are miserable.

...And JMP can talk until tomorrow that he doesn't cheat. He is the "king of the cheaters" - no what is this, no cheering, no homework, no hugging, no dance with strangers, romance mod, etc - they are not cheats, hah? Just small adds...:).

The only two cheat he doesn't use are "motherlode" and "max motives", because he likes to torture his puppets...:).

Well, I cheat and I suck and all of the above and I'm proud of it, so there, My Great Fishy Lord of Hackdom!  Neener-neener-neener!   :-*

For example, last night I moved a college-grad onto a lot with her best friend and her family.  My new grad and her best friend's husband promptly began beating the living crap out of each other beside the mailbox.  Oopsie!  I didn't even know they hated each other.  So, I moved her out.  I have no20Khandouts installed, but still she wound up taking $20,000 of her friend's money along with $4,000 she originally moved in with.  I thought of it as was compensation for whipping her friend's husband's rear end.  LOL  I moved her into a nice townhouse that cost more than $20K, and thought, "Okay, no cheats until she earns them."  I always start a new household that way, unless I really like the sim.  So, she's a popularity sim, she wants to have a party.  Since I installed NL and I never remember to do the Max# of visiting sims cheat, I can only invite 3 sims over.  That's not the decent housewarming party my Sim is wanting!  So, I use Inge's teleporter, and soon have about 9 or so Sims smustling happilly in the living room.  I notice that my sim has developed three lightning bolts for one of the party goers.  I sick her on him with the socailizer, and soon she's wanting to woo hoo and marry him.  I make her wait a couple of days, just so they can have a couple of dates and she can reap the rewards.  He broght her a fishtank, of all things!!  LMAO  Now, they are married, and they have a little one on the way.  I used cheats, used them happilly, and have no regrets.  :) 

Why not disable miscarriages with the "No Miscarriage" flavor pak?

I suppose I could, but I liked the idea of potential miscarriages, I just thought the reaction was out of proportion to how they usually react to things like death and relationship breakups.  I think the furious state is a bit OTT with the length of time it lasts too.

Actually I'm probably getting a bit old but I could feel my brain frying as I tried to work out what flavour did what and all that.  Much as I complain when users don't read the instructions with my hacks, I am really not at all good at reading instructions for other people's stuff :D

Alternatively... couldn't you just hack the memory for it, and tone down the strength?

Actually, I have a question about that, because I had cloned a memory and while I was toying with it, it seems that memories only have like 3 strengths (IIRC): 100 (64), 50 (32), and 25 (19). At least I think those were the only valid values I was able to set that to. Maybe there was also 0, but I didn't think I tried that. Anyways, am I right to assume that this strength value represents how much it affects the sim, like how often they might "remember" it later, and either use it to brag (if it's a good memory) or gossip or cry about (if it's a bad memory)?

It's a shame that there's only 3 settings. Unless I'm wrong about that. *shrugs* But it's as if there's just extremes, either just too powerful or not powerful at all, and the in between isn't exactly a happy medium either. :P

Ste

Heh, same with me - I like the possibility but the reaction, while appropriate, seems kinda disproportionate when you consider how the death of a beloved parent or child merits for some an aspiration hit and, oh, a day of crying randomly in between the usual jokes and chatting and smustling? I had a Sim in permaplat who I tested the miscarriage on (she was stuck with a pregnant body, and a real pregnancy sorted that out, but since she'd just had twins I didn't really want her to have any more kids.) She wouldn't use skill-building items for two or three days and kept waking up with nightmares... hmm, actually if the reaction to deaths was more like that, I'd personally like it too, heh. More realistic.

I'm keeping it in, though, since it creates a challenge, and the chance for more random things (especially bad things) occuring appeals to me. :P Another Sim had two close calls, and it definitely made me pay more attention to what was going on there instead of coasting through the time waiting to see what the kid came out looking like.

I can't imagine why a miscarriage is such a fuss. Surely it can't be worse than, say, having your computer crash right before you can save. In this case, perfectly good work is lost, but a mere miscarriage is simply a product failing nature's quality assurance. It wasn't done right anyway, so it's just as well that you have to do it over.

*puts on the Nomex suit, waits on the sidelines*

JM, just chalk it up to emotions. Y'know, those chemical/mental things that you don't seem to have? Used by the brain to speed up decision making?

I don't think that's such a positive thing, given that it seems to speed up the rate of incorrect decisionmaking. What good is it if it produces hasty, wrong decisions?

You remind me of a forensic medicine professor, who, upon discussing babies dying in the uterus, went "I don't understand what it is that makes women form such a strong emotional attachment to an unborn baby". You can imagine the buzz in the audience.

Never having been pregnant myself (thankfully) I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine that if you've long waited to have a baby and then have a miscarriage, even an early one can be a shock, even if there is no visible fetus yet. Then not to mention having the fetus die shortly before its due date and having to push out a full-term dead baby. I think I can emphatize with that to some degree even if I haven't been through that myself.

Beats ending up with a defective one you'll just have to try and RMA anyway. Quality control can be a very good thing.

That sounds unpleasant. But still better than having to try to RMA it.

Yes, it's very true that early abortions are also nature's own quality control. There are probably a lot more miscarriages than women themselves are aware of, very early ones due to serious problems like extra chromosomes and such. In that sense, the Maxian pregnancies with a pretty much 100% success rate (unless the mom dies from hunger) are quite unrealistic. Not to mention a 60% chance or so of getting pregnant with each try.

Did they honestly make it that much harder for pregnant sims to eat from UL to NL?  Honestly, if you didn't want them to put themselves face first into food then you would give them some rest before eating.  I believe these complaints came from strategies that barely worked in the base TS2 game, and NL amplified it.  You need the Hunger and Energy meters constantly for those sims, and always try to keep hunger the best it can be.  If all else fails, use the energizer aspiration award.  Either that, or go back to the safety of your mood-refreshing paintings.

I've also noticed that inefficient homes tend to kill pregnant sims.  Try not to make them go up and down stairs, especially ones that are often used.  If possible, keep a bed downstairs near the kitchen.

I don't think I'm going to get into the other side of the discussion since I don't know much about it.  I will say though, that feature of jase's inteenimater mod does prevent the death of the mother due to accelerated hunger and energy decay.

To my knowledge, strength can be any value from 0 to 100.  I think 100, 50, 25 are just 3 levels that Maxis chose with each level being half as strong as its predecessor.  This value decays over time.  I believe it is used to give weighting to the selection of thought bubbles/dreams/memories as well as "outbursts".

I can honestly say, I have only had 1 pregnant sim die from hunger, and that was when I tried the ethiopian challenge! I tend to get them into a feed-toilet-sleep cycle, especially since the 'fall asleep at the table' feature. I had trouble when I first got nightlife, but no sims died :)

I have had one pregnant sim die from hunger while pregnant and that was Circe Beaker. I l;eft it a bit long before waking her up from her nap. Loki saved her fortunately.

I think I take too good care of my sims.   ???
I've never had a sim die of disease (except a pregnant one (who wasn't actually sick), but her husband saved her).
I've never had a teen run away (except for a townie I made selectable in order to kill him off.  And that was yesterday.).
I've never had a student kicked out of school.
I've never even seen the social worker (or is she the ones who delivers adoptees as well?).
In fact, I don't think I've even had a sim die of anything other than old age, except for the ones I've delliberately killed off.  I had one sim scared to death once, but he was saved by his wife.

And I don't cheat!

I think I need to do a tortured sim project just for the heck of it.

Well, I've played without cheats too, (or any kind of hacks for that matter) but everything takes so long!

Ouch, dude. I think it's just one of those things you have to experience yourself to understand. I have to remind myself every day I come here that MATY is not a place for the thin-skinned.

Back on topic...anyway, I feel like I am totally stating the obvious here, but I just set my Sim moms on cruise control by having them meditate. Of course, you won't want to do that if you're in a panic about them being in the reds and oranges already. It seems like if they're pretty green it's easy to keep them there, and if they're not it's a vicious cycle. I try to combat it also by sending them off to work so they won't have morning sickness at home. That can screw things up right out of the gate.

If you get them to peak fitness before they get pregnant, they rarely get morning sickness badly, if at all!

Wow, that's amazing! I wish real life was like that.  :)

Just one of those simthings!

I'm here right now because I need a Sim breather.  The house of fallen trees has three pregnant sims in it and I'm going insane.  What's worse is that one of them is having twins.  There is already two toddlers.  Ahhhhhhh!!  I downloaded the All-in-One NPC(the nanny part) that is helping but the eat/hygeine/sleep cycles are getting to me.  The way I handle it is I start the cycle when the meters are down One quarter by the time they have cooked their food--their meter is rearing on the half way mark and by the time they have gone to the bathroom and showered the sleep meter is 75 percent.  I works well but it is aweful for everyone else in the house cause they tend not to get to socialize as much(less time is spent on them).

I don't let pregnant sims cook their own food - it takes too long. Either the husband or an older kid cooks for them (sometimes a nanny does) or (if they can afford it) I buy a buffet. I also put a daybed (or just a real bed if I don't have a daybed with reasonable stats) in the most sensible room closest to the kitchen, if their normal bedroom is upstairs. And I don't let anyone else eat with them. I let them fall asleep in their food (and wake them) 3 times and after the 3rd put them to bed until their energy is high enough for them to eat without falling asleep again. I haven't had one die yet (on the few occasions I've tried, starving to death seem to take a long time if those were the only 2 low - will they really starve/die if you let them sleep a bit?) and I don't usually use mood enhancers or anything like that. Usually I keep them home from work as if I send them and they get morning sick they come home all red. And I try to keep them platinum - usually social/playing with family members will do that. I'm very micromanagement-y tho.

Can I suggest something that I remember Damage recommending back in the early days of sims2 over at SimFreaks - (first, remove any serve food hacks you may have) - get the pregnant sim to serve gelatin.  It's sustaining if the sim is a reasonable cook, doesn't go bad as quickly as other food, and takes next to no time to serve!  And it's quick to eat!

Don't forget to order pizza-and don't accept the delivery! That way all the pregnant sim has to do is serve it. :) It stays fresh as long as the box is unopened. I use moveobjects on and put them under the porch to stop the sims from grabbing them, then when I need one I place it on the kitchen counter ;)
I actually forgot about doing this until I went on a family I haven't played for a while last night, and found all the pizza boxes under the porch! ::)

If you have a kid in the house, let them loose on Carrigon's pizza oven!  You'll soon have pizzas all over the house!

And of course the women can eat the muffins from the normal kids oven too, even though they can't cook them.

I used to use your hacked buffet table too, whenever a sim was pegnant!

I agree, it comes in very handy in these types of situations.  Put Inge's buffet table in the same room with the bed and have one of your Sims fill it up.  Then place a chair or sofa next to the buffet table, and then the pregnant Sim only has to go a couple of steps in order to eat.

Karen

And if the sim who first filled it has high cooking skills, the food is very filling!

That's interesting, I never knew it made a difference!

Well, I think it does, certainly it seems to!  One reason I stopped using it was too many of my sims were overeating!

When I first got the game and only used money cheats for larger families, I had my self-sim popping out kids left and right.  I kept the nursery next to the master bedroom and, since I always put a cheap fridge and a few counters in my nurseries, I was able to maintain her motives through copious amounts of gelatin and without upsetting the design of the house too much.  When I'm playing a multi-generational household I use a combination or the energizer, meditation, and the services of any retired elders that might be wandering around. 

Now, like Inge, I play the game the way I want to play it so it's enjoyable.  Even in Legacy houses, I use a motive cheat to fill in motives (usually fun and environment) that I feel impede the game to a ridiculous degree.  My boyfriend, who would rate an east 8 on the neatness scale, doesn't go into a 15 minute whiny fit when there are dirty dishes, nor does he refuse to perform other functions because of his discontent with the cleanliness of the house.  I also adjust motives when they encounter glitches (like getting trapped in the bathroom by the maid) or when they break queue to weep over roaches or hug a parent returning from work.

Talk about whiny fits!  I've just been playing Veronaville, and moved the Capps and there brood into a house and sent him off to work while she stayed to look after the toddler (he could get the best paid job available, but I couldn't see them surviving on a Team Mascot's pay!) .  Now whenever one of them is in the middle of taking a bath, the other one walks into the bathroom and throws a tantrum because they can't clean the bath because the other one is in it!  Oh, how neat sims drive one up the wall!  Give me Don and his "moue" at the idea of cleaning any day!

I occasionally cheat to boost motives, but my rule on it is that the sim in question has to be in platinum aspiration.  If they're gold, they gotta make their way out to the energiser and use that.  Less than gold, gotta do it the hard way.

Very occasionally I'll stick a flamingo or mediocrity onto the lot to save a sim from going too far into the red, then remove it once they're back up to green.  But mainly, this is about the one area I tend not to cheat in!

Being a mom, and having unfortunatly had a miscarriage once, I know from where I speak.  As soon as we start to think, "Wonder if I'm pregnant", we start daydreaming about the little baby we're going to give birth to.  As soon as we get the little positive line on the Pregnancy Test, we start reading baby name books and picking out nursery furniture and bedding.  As soon as we have that 1st OB appointment, see an early ultrasound of a blurry little being the size of a pea, or hear that baby's early heartbeat, it's real to us, it's a person, a little being inside of us.  And when something happens to this perfect little creature that we've invisioned (even if it was truly deformed and not viable as a human, to us in our dreams it's the Gerber Baby) it's devastating.  We blame ourselves.  There was something wrong with us, or we did something wrong, that caused the miscarriage.  We mourn the loss of a miscarried child similarly to how we would mourn the loss of a living child.  (I say similarly because I got over the loss of my little peanut, but I don't think I would ever, ever get over the loss of one of my kids.  I keep telling people that if something happened to one of them, they'd better dig two graves and be prepared to burry me beside them!)

Yeah, JMP, it's an emotional thing that you wouldn't understand, kind of a "you have to be there" thing.  And, Bliss, your professor was a pompous ass, and I'm glad he's teaching and not practicing with that lovely bedside manner!   >:(

But what an attitude he's passing on to a new generation of doctors!

The forensic medicine teachers have been some of the least humanistic people I've ever met. It's a good thing they most deal with dead bodies  :D. During one lecture, a teacher referred to a car accident killing several young people a tragedy. Not because of the future lives unlived, but because of their future taxes produced as working grown-ups left unpaid.

I would imagine that upon going into a field like forensics, one would almost have to develop a complete detachment from the death of individuals that are unknown or be faced with the inability to function in that job.  Kind of a graveside humor that serves as a defense mechanism.  I would think that eventually they'd become so used to it (their attitude, that is), that they wouldn't realize their attitude was offensive to others.

Yeah, I think that's exactly what happens. Everybody who works in medicine has to develop a defensive mechanism of some sort (or they'd be a mental wreck in no time), but the forensic medicine people have to go a little further with theirs, considering how depressing the stuff is they work with every day.

I had two early miscarriages between my first and second daughters. I'd already bonded with those babies, named them and imagined what they'd be like. Although I was immensly relieved that nature had indeed taken care of things I was still heartbroken. Realistically I know that up to 50% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage even before the mom realizes she's pregnant but I still mourned for them. I was luckily able to go on and have two more children but in some way the pain & sadness of those miscarriages will always be with me. When I was pregnant with my middle and and then my youngest daughters I had recurring nightmares that I miscarried or that they were stillborn.

As for pregnant sims I officially suck and cheat. I nearly lost Dina Goth, my first pregnant mom. I found Merola's Energizer Painting and stuck it in the bathroom of every house (easy for me to find). It's just the way I prefer to play. I think the way pregnant sims' mood bars drain is pretty stupid anyway. I wasn't that much of a "wilting flower" when I was expecting. ::)

And that's why I'm training to be a midwife not a doctor.  Practicing medicine is dehumanizing in a lot of ways -- and in America where every patient is a potential lawsuit, even more so.  My dad is a doctor.  While he cared a lot about his patients, he never had a "connection" or a relationship with them, the way I have a relationship with my moms.

C

I am so off-topic I am now on the moon, but....

Faemidwife, hooray for more midwives in this world, especially the US, which I assume you live in (based on your last post). I had the same midwife with both of my daughters and it was wonderful.

And thank you, IgnorantBliss, Cabelle, and Kristalrose, for your frank discussion about miscarriage. I know it's "just" MATY but it's nice to hear strong women talking about the subject. I touched on it upthread, but I wanted to add that I lost a twin when I was halfway through my last pregnancy. I feel very fortunate that I have her sister now, who is 10 months old, but I still feel a loss. I'm not trying to jump on anyone here, but I often feel like miscarriage is assumed not to be a "real" loss. It is usually more private, and there is usually no memorial for lost babies. So thank you for being open with this. I think I like this place even better now.

That's because it's NOT a real loss, any more than a build that fails to pass quality testing. Stuff just sometimes doesn't work. You should be happy that the problem was caught early, rather than becoming a post-release problem that would then require drastic measures to deal with. There's loss for you, having to drown it later when it turns out to be defective. IT COULD BE WORSE. Never forget that. Remember, the people at work think of me as an optimist.

... People at work? Since when did you ever leave your bunker? Your trying so hard to be an asshole you've introduced a huge gaping crack into your coverstory.  :P

Last week, actually. You didn't hear about my business trip? It's like when your helicopter goes down in a flaming heap in the jungle, and you have to walk 30 miles home. I point out, "Hey, at least it's good exercise."

Your business trip where you still managed to somehow show up here from time to time and post, because a message board is apparently so important it needs to be accessed even when one's life is in danger. I know the Internet is Serious Business, but really. ;)

Yes perhaps a little like that, if you stretch the analogy thinly.

Actually, I showed up from time to time to post because I had downtime, during was I am online to get the satellite imagery of the next target. It's either that, or throwing stones at scorpions. Which I also did.

Meanwhile giving away your position by sending data as well as receiving.

Not all miscarriages and stillbirths are due to the foetus being non-viable.  Sometimes it's a problem with the mother, sometimes it's due to illness or accident.  A trip on the stairs, a minor collision when driving, an attack by a mugger etc., many things can contribute to miscarriage or stillbirth and it's perfectly normal for the prospective mother to mourn the loss, in fact, it's probably nature's way of ensuring that she takes better care of herself next time she's pregnant.  

I don't honestly think any man could possible understand, it's hard enough for women like myself who've never had kids, but at least those of us who are not in that situation should not make fun of those that are, or have been in the past!  If you've not been there, not got the t-shirt, you cannot possibly understand, but a little sympathy goes a long way!

Ooooo-kay, Mr. JM I-am-a-real-vampire Pescado.  ::)

I don't think you're grasping how TCP/IP works. Suffice it to say that this was not a realistic operational concern given the nature of the targets.

You have obviously misunderstood the statement.

Ah but was it a real operation? :P

In think the 'scorpian' reference was an attempt to throw us off the truth.

My guess he was out clubbing seals.

I bet it was one of those silly 'motivational' things that companies make their suits do. It likely involved either paintball or lazer tag.

Or the "trust" exercise falling off a table into your co-workers arms.   ;)
c

Maybe if Dumb, Cwieberdink-Type-People were in the chat more, you'd know better than to suggest silly things like this. :P

They don't have scorpions there

Oh, I knew that one would get your goat  LOL  (or is it your Llama?)

C

Did you learn that method of scorpion control from the Iraqi Information Minister?

Oh good old Comical Ali!   I do wish he'd do some UK appearances!

I don't see how a man is any less capable of understanding than a woman who's never been pregnant (like myself).
Anyway, that's as far as I'm going into this discussion without a ten foot pole.

Faemidwife, teehee.   :D  You are better at pushing his buttons than I am, I think.

Gwill - I completely agree.  Men aren't any worse at understanding pregnancy than women who have never been pregnant.  And I'm out too.  ;)

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend men who do try to understand, I was careless in my phrasing.  However, I think most women have at least thought they were pregnant at some time in their lives, and been disappointed (or perhaps relieved) to discover they weren't!  (Nuns excepted, I guess!)

I think one has to be careful to not go too far one way or the other with the sympathy/empathy.  It's obviously necessary to accept that many of we women will be distraught to lose an unborn child and have grown attached to it like one already born.  I just worry slightly that it's beginning to sound like (and I mean in general, not in this thread) you have to feel that way or you're not natural and ought to feel guilty.  I hope those women who feel they just want the hospital to dispose of the remains and get on with planning the next pregnancy will not feel they can't admit to feeling that way for fear of disapproval.

I lost a baby at age 23, when I was a single gal shacking in a friend's utility room and working at Wal-Mart for an amazing $6.25 an hour.  It was for the best and I came to terms with it as soon as I was able to step off the hormonal rollercoaster from hell.  I have been chastised for not being more sentimental, but what more can I say?  I was emotionally prepared for a baby, but "emotionally prepared" doesn't buy diapers or cover childcare.  I've known some women who see miscarriages as a challenge to try again (one woman had 8 miscarriages and 5 babies and she passed her bad heart on to every last one of them), some see it as the end of a dream and others (like myself) have a more pragmatic (and dare I say Pescado-ian?) reaction. 

However, I think the key to being an outsider in any loss situation is to let the person most closely affected deal with it the way they feel they should, as long as they are not acting in unhealthy or dangerous ways.  Grief is irrational and nonsensical and it doesn't help anyone when you try to force it to be. 

IMHO, it's an individual thing. I've had losses of different types and my reaction to a loss may be vastly different than the next person who had the same type of loss. So it's not just a "you had to be there" type of thing, it's a "you had to be there and standing in my personality and emotional temperament" type of thing.

Even though I've experienced miscarriage, I am not so sensitized that I'd never want to see it in the game because it's "too realistic." Hey the more realistic for me, personally THE BETTER. Makes for much more interesting story lines. Neither am I particularly offended by JMPs statements regarding it.

R-r-rational discussion of a volatile subject? On the internet?! What sort of alternate reality have I stepped into?

Wow, this is what I like about this place, seriously...

Ahhh, I also am not one to be offended at JMP's responses.  I know that he really, truly, deeply, does not give a shit.  And at least he's honest about it.  LMAO :-*

Fae:  You're really studying to be a midwife!  Good for you, girl!  We need more midwives sooo bady in this country!!  I had one for the birth of my second child in WV, and loved her and her common sense approach.  While pregnant with the third baby, I read every midwifery book and web site I could find, and, even thought about going into midwifery myself, since there are NONE in my area of NC.  So, not only do you have some of the most beautiful avatars on the site, you also have one of the coolest jobs.  :) 


I completely agree with everyone's comments about everyone mourning a miscarriage differently.  It's that way no matter who is loss.  When my father passed, my mother and I spent about a week crying and having nightmares.  My sister, on the other hand, spent days alone, not speaking to anyone, angry.  Don't think she shed a tear.  Was she sad that our father had died?  You betcha. But, that was the way she dealth with it. 

Batelle:  I don't think you were unemotional, I think you were strong and very logical about the whole thing.  I wish more of us were like that. 

Practical field experience tells me that when people insist on being whiny babies, the best way to deal with is to berate and insult them until they become enraged. It redirects their attention away from their snivelling and puts them in a more useful, motivated state of mind. Rage is more useful than despair. Depression is just anger without enthusiasm.

 
Most of my friends are into martial arts and the ones who don't use their fists are armed.  Possibly to the teeth.

I agree with you to a certain degree (insofar that rage is more useful than despair) but I don't see the benefit in forcing someone from sadness to anger.  Most people make the transition on their own and then you get the fire to move on.  Just because you can whip them into a frenzy now doesn't mean they won't cry themselves to sleep in a few hours and then they'll be, like, enthusiastically depressed and they start listening to really awful rap metal and crying at soap commercials.

On the original subject, I killed a pregnant sim for a story last night and it took hours for her to die (which made it even harder to do).  I don't understand why accidental pregnancy deaths are so prevalent when the same pregnant sim resists pre-meditated means.
 

LOL.  Yeah, Arnold in Terminator 3:

"Anguh is more usefool than despayuh"

C

Maybe not, but at least they won't be doing it in front of me.

I really should see that one sometime.

Yeah, like you haven't!   :P

JM, about women who've lost babies--motherhood is a very bizarre thing.  Most of us have high nurturing instincts and from the time we know that little clump of cells is there, we want to do everything we can to protect it and have a healthy child.  Unfortunately, as you say, sometimes nature doesn't work out right and things don't turn out as we hope.  But also as said, sometimes it's a problem with the mother herself, and not the baby.  As a mom who carried 5 children to term and had two of them stillborn, let me just say it isn't an easy thing to go through.  Now, couple the loss of a child with the hormones that start running rampant right after birth and let me tell you, it is utter emotional chaos.

I think most people who haven't experienced the loss of a child at whatever stage wouldn't understand and honestly I hope they never have the opportunity to understand it. :)

Finally. Someone else who knows the awful truth about soap commercials. Damn soap . . . I've never considered metal rap particularly depressin, though. Linkin Park, for example, is more funny than depressing.

Forget metal rap, if you are depressed and want to milk it for a bit, Scottish or Irish music is the way to go. Half of the songs are about people loosing their love or their life or both.

Chorus (after each verse):
Cold the wind on the moors blow
Warm the enemy's fire glows
Black the harvest of Culloden
Pain and fear and death grow

'Twas love of our prince drove us on to Drumossie
But in scarcely the time that it takes me to tell
The flower of our country lay scorched by an army
As ruthless and red as the embers of hell

Now mothers and children are left to their weeping
With only the memory of father and son
Turned out of their homes to make shelter for strangers
The blackest of hours on this land has begun

Plus anything by Sinead O'Connor! 

  I somewhat agree with you JM but if a person is prone to be whiny-- then they are also sensitive and a good berating will not be affective in that case.  Tact might be in order.

Eh. It's not as good as the other two. Personally 2 is my favorite. (Not that the end sequence no-flesh Terminator isn't AWESOME, but there aren't any of those romance type scenes and having a killer robot that has to do whatever some kid tells it to is funny.) 3 just tends toward sillyness. Like, they never explain why massively powerful electromagnets cause the evil robot to stick to it but don't totally fry her systems. And the older version of Connor is an idiot. (On the other hands, the "good" terminator apparently has "knowledge of human psychology," and this entirely revolves around hitting them to make them stop being idiots.)

They really are your kind of movies, though. Massive explosions, killer robots, incomprehensible European accents . . . Hey, d'ya think Boris is maybe some kind of alternate universe Terminator where the Skynet has an inexplicable fixation on Russian accents rather than Austria ones?

EDIT: Tact? Feh. Tact is for silly people who seem to think it's a good thing to not say what they mean.

Anger can be used very constructively.  I've cleaned my whole house on a fit of rage.

Musie!  :D  My hubby will pick a fight to get me to clean because when I'm in a furious state I clean, clean, clean.  He can tell just how mad I am getting by how deep the cleaning goes.  "getting out a toothpick to clean the grit out of the shower drain?"  Watch out!

C

See, and they say cleaning is not excercise.  Pfft!