A new life stage in The Sims 4 arrived with a free update in March 2023. Now, newborns grow into infants. This is a new stage in your Sim's life: unique personality traits, life milestones, and upbringing that will affect the child's future life. In this material, we've compiled a complete guide to raising infants in The Sims 4: how to play with them, develop them, and what personality traits the grown-up baby will inherit.

New Life Stage

All life stages as of the latest update in The Sims 4:

• Newborn. The first life stage after birth. Interaction with a newborn is limited to satisfying basic needs and some interaction. The baby lies in swaddling clothes and cries when needing something. It's the shortest stage;
• Infant. Starting from this stage, you can edit the character in CAS and control them;
• Toddler. At this stage, the child learns to walk and talk;
• Child. Now the Sim can develop skills that will carry over into adult life and starts going to school;
• Teen. The character enters puberty, goes to high school, gets acne and hair. Hormones rage, moods fluctuate, and first crushes appear. A challenging but very interesting period in a Sim's life;
• Young Adult. Taking the first steps into adult life: college, work, parties, dating, and attempts to start a family;
• Adult. The penultimate stage - the Sim grows into a full-fledged adult. The main task is to navigate the midlife crisis and secure life success;
• Elder. The Sim's life is nearing its end, although there's still enough time to spend with grandchildren, relax, and possibly find a way to extend their days. Or even achieve immortality...

Interesting fact. Until the free update in 2017, children had only three life stages: newborn, child, and teenager. That is, a baby, lying in a crib and wrapped in swaddling clothes, would literally turn into a full-fledged child ready for school in just a few days. In previous parts of the series, toddlers were included from the base game.

An infant cannot move or learn to walk on their own. If not in a crib or in the arms of a parent, they will lie on the floor on a special mat or in a playpen. You can take them out in a stroller, carry them in a special backpack, keep them in a crib, or on a play mat. As with toddlers, who appeared in the game earlier, infants need to be fed, bathed, diapered, played with, and communicated with.

Infants can be fed breast milk, from a bottle, or in a high chair. In the latter case, they will need help from a parent. Interestingly, the child will start showing their first food preferences, and it's not a given that they will agree to eat the offered treats.

Development Stages of an Infant

The approach parents take to raising an infant will affect the course of their further life stages. Try to give the child all the attention and care to ensure they grow up happy.

Communication

Communication and interaction with family is one of the most important development stages. Spend time with the infant, talk and play with them. It's especially interesting to see how children and toddlers interact with the baby - the new interaction options are adorable.

If you regularly talk to and engage the baby, you'll soon see their first smile, babbling, laughter, and even teach them to play peekaboo with their hands.

The emotions an infant can experience include:

• angry;
• fine;
• sad;
• happy;
• playful;
• energized;
• scared;
• asleep.

Fine Motor Skills

Developing fine motor skills, an infant will master basic abilities like grasping with hands, holding objects, waving, and clapping. Buy toys for the child, help them interact with them, and soon the infant will begin sucking their fingers and reaching for everything they see. The best option is a special play mat with hanging rattles available in the children's section of Build mode.

Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills involve basic movements of an infant: lifting the head, rolling over, crawling, sitting, and first attempts to stand on their feet. Here, the baby definitely needs help and supervision from parents. Help the child to move, roll over, and over time they will be able to perform these actions independently.

Unique Events

Every event happens for the first time in our lives. The same is true for infants. The character's memory will retain firsts like:

• bathing;
• bubble bath;
• tasty food;
• deep, long sleep;
• guests;
• attempt to eat with hands;
• blowing out a diaper and others.

All life milestones can be unlocked during interaction and observation of the infant. Some moments can be missed, so be attentive.

Life Path Expansion

With the release of the "Growing Together" expansion, infants were given 18 new unique personality traits. For example, a baby might eat neatly or messily, hate waking up or being held, love to wake up early or, conversely, sleep in. If you don't want to guess what needs to be done to obtain a specific trait, simply use cheat codes for the "Growing Together" expansion.

How to Make an Infant Happy

When an infant moves to the next life stage - toddler, they will receive one of the bonus personality traits, depending on how they were cared for:

• Unhappy Infant. Likely, you did not provide enough attention to the growing child. In the future, they will be more stubborn and disobedient;
• Happy Infant. That's better. The child will strive to build friendly relationships with others, and overall, the life stage was successful;
• Top Notch Infant. You did a great job. The infant was constantly surrounded by love and care, gaining all the necessary life skills. A perfect reason for pride!

If you did well and provided a lot of attention to the child, you can choose their personality traits yourself, and later accelerate their skill development.