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Of course your new-born baby needs food, love and sleep, but how much and how often? Is there a way you can tell it's needs from the crying or behaviour?

Let's have a look at the most obvious needs first, food, fun and sleep.

Food
You want your baby to grow up, right? Ok, so it needs lots of food to be able to burst out of that cradle within a few days. And that tiny body sure can drink a lot! Don't ever stop after just one bottle of temperated milk! My latest child had 3 bottles for most of her meals, that's quite a lot though. Listen carefully, and if the baby gives a belch when you put it back into the cradle, it's had enough milk for now. If you then feed it again, it will cry while you do so, and probably you will put it back into it's cradle quite soon - wasted time and energy, in other words.

You can't tell from the crying whether feeding is your baby's most urgent need, but most babies will wake up because they are hungry. Starting the baby watch with some milk will never be wasted, but after that first bottle, you will need to find out what is needed to satisfy that adorable little baby of yours.

Fun
They are hardly born, but they know what entertainment is, already! I've read some where that there are historical events where Sims cried over lack of fun the minute they were dying from hunger or fire. Fun IS a typical Simmish thing, so don't underestimate your baby's needs here! It tends to be a general opinion out there that Sim babies don't need much playing and fun, but you are totally wrong folks!

Well, the need of fun depends on the baby's personality, and it can vary widely. Some babies need just a little playing, others can't get enough. You should at least play with your baby once every day, and if you have older kids, they might like to play with the baby, too. There is hardly a better way to let the new family member get to know it's family.

Sleep
Most babies love to hear a lullaby before they are put to sleep. This is also a very tender moment, both for the baby and the parent, it's about love, folks, at least if you can sing, *shrug*:).

If you are a parent already, you will know that when your baby is asleep, hardly anything can wake it up. But, is it that easy that you don't need to pay attention to our little miracle baby when it's quiet and asleep? A research done at the Sim City University shows that babies who slept in the same room as a noisy tv-set, turned out to be slightly more aggressive (active and playful) than babies sleeping in a quiet room. They also found that flies in the same room could result in a less neat kid. None of the results were dramatic or serious, but they show that the baby's environment can effect it's behaviour later on. Maybe it learns from sounds and smells while it's asleep?

Signs of the needs?
A baby is a complex creature, just like the rest of us, with many qualities and needs. We can't always tell what the baby is in need of at the moment, and I'm sure a lot of parent spend hours on each baby watch on giving the baby something it doesn't need at all.

The belch after feeding is the only safe sign I'm aware of, telling you that the baby had enough milk for now. When you play with it, it might cry a lot, if so it obviously need less fun. If it laughs while you play with it, it likes it, and you might have a baby who like to play a little. It will most likely wave it's arms while you play, I'm not sure if that is a sign of being an active kid, needing lots of play. Finally, the babies might react differently on your lullaby singing. If it cries, it isn't necessarily your singing talent it's disliking, but most likely there are some other need that has not been satisfied yet.

Babies are very different indeed, you will need to write down it's response to each of your treatments in order to hopefully see a pattern. When you find that pattern of needs, you will also know pretty well how that child is going to be like. I'll tell you more about this method in a later article.
 

The photo in this article shows my husband, Crawl, feeding our latest baby.