Little Steps

Aah yes. You have decided to have a baby, a beautiful bundle of squirming, giggling, pooping pixels. But how?

The whole process gives you just about as many options as in real life, and possibly even more! More?

Well, in Second LIfe, condoms come with the HUD, and they’re free. So you never run out. Or rather, you never “run out”, so no more excuses for unprotected sex!

Oh, wait. Unprotected sex is kinda what it’s all about, at least if you’re trying to get knocked up. But, let’s say that this month you don’t want to get knocked up? Wrap it up, boys.

Wow, I’ve gone directly from you wanting to get pregnant, to your partner using condoms. How’s that for unfocused?

So, you want to get pregnant. In Second Life. Well, just like in rl, you have to put a HUD on. Ok, maybe not just like in rl, but you still have to put a HUD on. There’s a HUD for the potential pregnant person, and a HUD for the potential “get the potential pregnant person pregnant” person. See, I’m being all-inclusive here, because, well this is SL after all. Vaginas are not a prerequisite for babymaking anymore. They’re probably nice to have, if you happen to have one, but in SL, your HUD is your new genitalia.

So, you have the HUDs, the ones that you’ve decided on getting after talking to the wonderful staff at Little Steps – yes, there are several choices, all designed with tons of options. But now what?

You boink. Doh.

OR, you can go the artificial insemination route. Test-tube pixels are all the rage nowadays, and completely possible. Just talk to Dr. Nicole and she’ll knock you up real good.

Boinking doesn’t mean you get automatically pregnant though. You have options. You have limitations. You have periods, you have fertility cycles. You have headaches, your partner can’t get it up. Lots of things to think about.

But one happy day it happens. You have a bun in the oven, and soon your tummy will begin talking to you (we’ll cover that in another post – baby pixels learn to talk at the early age of a couple minutes after conception). Your tummy will also begin talking to anyone who will listen.

There you have it. “How to get pregnant the natural way in SL”. Any questions? Then stop by Little Steps and talk to the wonderful staff there. You won’t regret it, or at least, you won’t regret it nearly as much as that one night stand from the other night at the club with whats-his-face.

Little Steps is a maternity clinic located on “Linked Hearts”. It’s an amazing clinic, with a very qualified staff, and an atmosphere that is more than perfect for bringing a lovely bundle of pixelated joy into this virtual world. Did I mention that it’s run by Dr. Nicole Jewell, who is the foremost expert on virtual lady-organs and how to make pixels pop out of them?

LoveFactory, run by LoveFactory Violet, is the foremost retailer of beautiful… stuff in all of SL. If you can imagine it, it’s there. Violet specialises in “love stuff” – go visit it and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, they got together, and the result is… feet.

I’m not quite sure what this means. It could be, that they didn’t have enough baby mojo to make the rest of the baby? They ran out of pixels after the feet were done? They used so much colour in the feet that there wasn’t enough for the rest of the baby, and the baby really is there, but invisible?

Whatever happened, I actually think it’s kinda cool. These footprints look really well made (like we’ve come to expect from Violet) and little footprints = Little Steps – get it?

In any case, awesome footsies, and they’re FREE. Click on the pic to be brought to the Marketplace for this item, and you TOO can have your very own invisible baby except for the feet!

Check out the LoveFactory blog too – I hear they have a blog write that is just too cool for words!

In Second Life anything can happen. You can be a mermaid. You can fly. You can be held prisoner on an island and tortured, with no fear of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. You can also have sex, virtual sex with anyone of your choice. Good, creative pixel sex with no fear of any sexually transmitted diseases or even soreness that should happen after your partner has edited his… attributes… to completely inhuman dimensions.

But hey! Now you can get pregnant. Everyone seems to be doing it, too. You can barely go anywhere without some unborn baby talking at you from somebody’s tummy, either telling you that it want’s it’s mother to eat some ice cream with pickles on top, or something like that.

So that gets you thinking: “Pregnant??”

Yes, you too can get pregnant, even in SL. Same procedure as you’ve been using while having fun in SL, only now, there’s the real possibility of having that fun result in a virtual baby!

What’s the draw? Well, personally, I’m not sure. It could be the fact that a nice family roleplay could bring you and your partner closer together. It could be the idea of motherhood giving you warm fuzzies in your heart. It could also be that your own real-life kids have caused so much havoc that you long for offspring that you can clean up after with a simple right-click –> delete.

Now, virtual maternity is big business in SL. There are clinics all over the grid, some better than others, ready to help you with every aspect of conception, pregnancy and birth. There are entire blogs devoted to the subject (oh yeah, like this one!) and the Marketplace is more than able to provide you with anything you need for your newborn – from furniture, to toys and food.

Conception happens in the most natural and beautiful way possible. With scripts! Well, scripted objects. These objects will be with you during your entire pregnancy, and the role play can begin!

Compare that to real life conception. First, the guy has to buy the girl flowers, then tell her she’s pretty. Then he’s all “Hey baby, wanna?” and she’s all “Not tonight I have a headache”. And this is all before the issues of body temperature, ovulation, failed birth control or impotence. Second Life lets you forget all those things and get right to the experience of parenthood.

The experience is a very individual one, and can be anything you want it to be – it all depends on how much you put into the roleplay scenario, your choice of partner (or no partner). The idea, as with everything in SL, is to have fun.

So, if you’re a straight couple, gay couple, transgendered, neko or a tiny (or all of the above) or just really, really ugly and undateable, then this may be the perfect solution for what you’ve been looking for!