User:Hordes/Reproduction

(For animal pregnancy) ALTNAMES: Reproduction, Human reproduction, Pregnancy

Reproduction, most often from Pregnancy, is the means for humans to create children, alongside all other living beings.

Pregnancy Methods

Natural

Pawns have a chance to get pregnant when they initiate Lovin'. Fertility is the primary stat for increasing prenancy chances. You can further increase pregnancy odds by opening a pawn's social tab and choosing to try for pregnancy (x4 chance) or try avoid pregnancy (x0.25 chance).

The actual chance that a pair of pawns will do Lovin' each night varies, but it requires them to share the same bed and sleep at the same time. Their chance of Lovin' varies by age, as seen in this chart. The low libido and high libido genes will also alter this. There have been reports that colonist mood and opinions of each other also influence the chance of doing Lovin'.

Surrogacy

A female pawn may be implanted with a fertilized embryo, giving the pawn a change to become pregnant. The chance of success depends on the surrogate's own Fertility.

Even if they did not supply the ovum, the surrogate will be considered the birth mother. Otherwise, it will act as a regular pregnancy.^[Check]

Fertility

A pawn's chance of getting impregnated can be seen by checking their Fertility stat. This stat is affected by a variety of factors, such as age and genes. For baseline humans without fertility-modifying genes, both men and women start becoming fertile after age 14; women's fertility increases until it reaches 100% through ages 20-28, then drops steadily from 100% to 0% at age 50, while men's fertility increases until it reaches 100% through ages 18-50, then starts dropping before reaching 0% at age 90.

Female Fertility

Male Fertility

Pregnancy process

Pregnancy lasts for 18 days, broken into three 6 day trimesters. The pregnant pawn will gain penalties ^[Specifics?] to movement, manipulation, and hunger rate, increasing each trimester. They also occasionally gain mood buffs or debuffs due to hormonal induced mood swings.

Birth

The player will receive two notifications before birth: one at the third trimester, and another when the mother enters labor. Once labor begins, the birthing procedure can be initiated by clicking on the mother, and selecting the "Begin birth" option. This allows the player to select participants and a Doctor, much like Ideology's rituals. Presence of loved ones and a skilled doctor increase chance of a healthy birth. They will gather at a bed or equivilent.

The progress of labor can be tracked in the mother's health tab. Each successive stage of labor results in an increasing amount of pain, quickly incapacitating the pawn. Once birth is complete, the baby will appear on an adjacent tile, and the mother will be incapacitated by exhaustion for up to a full day. At this point, a pawn with the Childcare work enabled can be instructed to either move the baby to a safe space, or to deliver it to the mother for breastfeeding.

Outcomes

The baby can be born healthy, sickly, or die during birth. There is also a chance that the mother can die during childbirth. This is impacted by the quality of the room, the cleanliness, the quality of the bed, the quality of the doctor and if loved ones are around. The baby's first and last names can be changed within 1 game-day of birth, though nickname can always be changed.

If the baby is born sick, they are affected by grave infant illness, which often starts off as Major. If left untreated before 10 days is up, the baby dies, but if it lives through 10 days after birth, the illness will no longer affect the baby.

Pawns that successfully give birth (regardless if healthy or sick) then lactate and can feed their child milk. After 10 days of not breastfeeding a child, they cease to lactate.

Growth vats

Growth vats are a complete alternative to pregnancy. They require the Growth vats research, as well as the Fertility procedures research and 2 pawns with > 0% Fertility to create embryos.

They allow an embryo to be born in 9 days, half the time of a natural pregnancy, without a risk to the mother. Active vats must be given a constant supply of nutrition^{[How much?]} and power to ensure survival of the fetus.

Prevention

The simplest way in the game to prevent pregnancy is to not give pawns a double bed to themselves. However, couples do not like this, and it deprives them of the mood bonuses of Lovin' in the first place. You can set pairs to avoid pregnancy in the Social tab, which reduces the rate by -75%.

The Fertillity Procedures research gives access to multiple ways to stop pregnancy.

IUD & Vasectomy

You can stop a female from being pregnant with the "Implant IUD" operation, and stop a male from reproducing with the "Perform vasectomy" option. Both options cost 1 medicine and last indefinitely. They can be reversed for 1 medicine. Note that a botched operation (either way) can cause permanent sterility.

IUDs also stop pregnancies in the first trimester.

Tubal Ligation

This permanently stops a female from being able to reproduce. "Perform tubal ligation" is a medical operation requiring 1 medicine.