By the end, pregnancy wasn’t sitting so well with Veronica anymore. She got huge. She couldn’t sleep. She had to eat in tiny snacks and spent half her days in the bathroom.

 

“Please,” she moaned to Charles in a fit of weakness, “just bring back the morning sickness. That part was grand.”

Charles was beside himself trying to be supportive. He massaged her shoulders, fetched her breakfast in bed, and hovered around until she kicked him out of the house to get some space.

 

“At least try to do something comfortable for yourself,” he said almost pleadingly. “You don’t have to suck it up. Take a day at the spa or something.”

Veronica thought about it. “All right, I will.” She pulled 1000 simoleons out of their joint bank account and bought herself a day of the royal treatment.

 

And, she had to admit, it worked. She left the spa feeling like a million bucks even with indigestion and a baby stomping on her bladder.

In fact, she felt so great that when she got home and found that Fabian had broken the shower before leaving for work and just left it that way, she had to do something about it.

 

Didn’t that make a perfect moment for the baby to come?

 

Charles was at the dojo. She called him on her cell phone, lay out plastic on the seat of her car, and drove herself to the hospital. She could have waited for Charles to teleport home and drive her, but the thought didn’t occur in the haze of contractions.

Charles was there with her by the time she got to the hospital, though, and he never left her side through the long labor.

“AAAAAUGH! Well, THAT was the hardest thing I have done in my entire life!”

It’s a boy! Forest Sample was born at 6:29 AM.

“No! Not again! There can’t be another one in there!”

And another boy! Hunter Sample was born at 6:33 AM.

“YOU! YOU DID THIS TO ME! You have some kind of twisted occult ghost fertility!”

And a girl! Sky Sample was born at 6:37 AM.

Babies are all doing fine.

 

Mother is doing fine, but it may be a while before she speaks to the father.

 

When it became clear just how much bigger their bundle of joy was going to be than they expected, Charles called his mother in a panic.

 

By the time they made it home from the hospital, Zahra and Fabian had turned Lance and Layla’s old room into a fine triplet-sized nursery.

 

This really was going to take a village.

 

Charles had spent Veronica’s entire pregnancy worrying about what he would do if his child turned out to be like him. When Forest and Hunter were born with totally normal, squalling, mocha-skinned faces, he was delighted.

But the third child, Sky, realized his fears. Life has a half-ghost, an “occult” according the newspaper, had been no easy road for Charles. How could he wish that on his only daughter?

 

When he looked back on his isolated, lonely life, though, he had trouble convincing himself that it had been either isolated or lonely. Even beyond his supportive family was Jabari, Zhan Wu, and now dozens of students who looked to him as a Sim Fu master.

There was no use trying to fight Sky’s battles before he even knew what they were.

 

Veronica fed little Forest and lay him gently in his crib. For a brief moment, all three babies were sleeping.

She drew Charles into her arms. “I’m sorry for being a monster,” she said.

He relaxed against her. “Childbirth is monstrous,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to do it alone.”

 

“Our children are beautiful,” she said. “I love you with all my heart.”

“And I you,” he replied huskily.

 

“I also want you to know that I’m calling the doctor tomorrow and getting my tubes tied. If you want any more kids, you can goddamn have them yourself.”

———-

Surprise three times over! Gotta get posts out while I have the time. Plus I know all you really want to do is see the babies 🙂 🙂 :).

In case you didn’t catch it, the naming theme is nature words. What else would an eco-hippie name his kids? (Sure, Veronica named them too, but Charles is still the patron dangit.)

The multiples thing wasn’t an accident. I gave Charles Fertility Treatment, and I managed to get enough Happiness Points to give it to Veronica too by their wedding night. In Gen 2, I had given just Layla Fertility Treatment, and she didn’t get twins until her second pregnancy. I wasn’t sure what the probability of multiples was, and I didn’t want to take any chances. Once the honeymoon vacation and maternity leave were up, Veronica was going to be a full adult before she even got to start her new job as a Ghost Hunter, and she has a career LTW. I didn’t want her to take the career hit for multiple pregnancies and run the risk of not making her wish.

And I knew triplets were a possibility, but I thought, “Hey great! Three’s a charm!”

I had no idea how hard it would be to skill three toddlers before their child birthday. The whole five-adult household has been skilling in shifts and dropping almost all their personal wishes for the whole life stage, and it still will be a near thing. Charles and Veronica spent about a week with an unfulfilled wish to Woohoo sitting in their queues. Ah, that is perhaps too close to what new parenthood is really like :).

Veronica got a wish to spend 1000 simoleons at the spa, and she got a huge mood bonus for a WEEK! Don’t say the spa never did anything for you. It got her through a whole lot of the grind of starting a new job and endless endless toddler skilling.

Oh, and sorry about the crappy unfinished state of the nursery. The house had routing problems in that room, and I had to restructure the wall just a little bit. I THOUGHT I had repainted everything properly in the inside, but man was I wrong! And the roof doesn’t even connect property to the half wall! I’d’ve paused everything and gone into Build Mode to fix it, but I’d already had to reload twice at that point and just want to save and GET OUT.

I’m not entirely sure what I want to do with Sky. On one hand, I’m glad one kid turned out to be a ghost. OTOH, Charles’s aging is completely borked and I’m just aging him up using Twallan’s mods when Veronica has a birthday because they are exactly the same age. Cyclone got so borked that I had to annihilate him. It just seems like there are real game issues with playable ghosts, and I’m not sure I want to risk it again. I have been boosting Charles’s fishing and Fabian’s cooking with the thought of feeding her ambrosia before her YA birthday. She can still be a ghost child for story purposes, but unless I can find some fix for the aging trouble, I think enough ghosts is enough for one game.

(Oh, and I have to say that I thought Veronica’s game-generated maternity wear was adorable. It’s the first time I think I’ve liked any of the maternity wear.)