The SL Enquirer: Hands on Maternity Clinic & Birthing Clinic

Hands on Maternity Clinic & Birthing Center is the most realistic pregnancy and role playing experience in Second Life with over 8 years in operation and managed by real world medical professionals. HOM provides a realistic experience to couples and singles who want to experience the joys of pregnancy and caring for a virtual baby. The facility is beautifully designed with a comforting atmosphere. Confidentiality and personal care and treatment is held at the highest regard for each patient.

Dr WilliamOwens along with his highly skilled team offer an assortment of services ranging from weekly prenatal packages, appointments, lamaze classes, yoga, baby shower planning, personalized birthing options as well as post pregnancy services to get the best out of this special experience.

One of the best things about Hands on Maternity Clinic & Birthing Center is they never stop advancing and introducing new and improved services to enrich and make your experience even more realistic.

The SL Enquirer sat down with Dr WilliamOwens to introduce a brand-new product sure to excite couples who are expecting a bundle of joy. It’s called the Hands On Mommy HUD and It’s the perfect HUD that includes partners in all the action!

Interview with DƦ.ωιℓℓιαм Gσldeη-ßrιgнt ʍeуer (williamowens)

Lanai Jarrico: Dr WilliamOwnes! I am so excited to be meeting with you to share with our readers more about this new innovative services and products for parents to be! Before we get into the interview, please share a little about yourself and what inspired you to create such a realistic clinic for those wanting to experience having a baby in Second Life.

Dr WilliamOwnes: Hello Lanai! It is so wonderful to sit down with you today! I first opened Hands On Care, with the invaluable help of my forever partner in crime Higher, over 6 years ago. I am getting old, I know! At the time I looked at the Second Life Maternity Clinic scene and felt like a lot was missing. Through all these years we have helped to deliver over 10,000 virtual babies (each of whom took somewhere between 6 and 45 hours of service) and we have assisted countless mommies from the beginning to the end of their pregnancy journey. Yet our goal always remained the same: providing the most realistic, awe-inspiring virtual pregnancy experience in the warmest, family like and most luxurious setting possible. Basically...creating a realistic experience that feels like a fairytale. A small task, right?! We wanted to allow people who couldn’t have children in real life to feel pampered and experience the closest possible thing to a real pregnancy experience. We wanted them to be inspired by their time with us, we wanted them to leave the clinic having learned something truly special.

Lanai Jarrico: Hands on Maternity Clinic & Birthing Centers is such a well designed facility that encompasses a true pregnancy and birthing experience without the pain! What type of services do you offer?

Dr WilliamOwens: definitely too many for me to mention without having you fall asleep on me! But we are offering just about anything Maternity-related that one could possibly think of. From a-la-Carter maternity care packages, to VIP inclusive maternity care packages, specific mommy products, baby showers, lamaze classes, breastfeeding classes, pediatric services, mommy vacation homes, regular birthing suites, fantasy birthing suites, live avi births, and all sorts of amazing, private locations!

We have always tried to innovate ourselves. That means lots of extravagant ideas that, thankfully, our even more extravagant clients seem to really love. How we love our patients, they are the reason for all of this!

Lanai Jarrico: You should be very proud of what you created! One of the things that separates your clinic from many others in Second Life is that you advertise that you have real Doctors and Nurses on staff at the clinic that offer information on the stages of pregnancy and delivery? How do you vet your staff to make sure they are in fact licensed medical professionals?

Dr WilliamsOwens: Yes, that’s very true. It has always been very important for us to have doctors with real life medical backgrounds. And because there is no way of proving one’s background with a piece of paper to the clients, we want the proof to be in the many details that we share during our interaction with the patients. Often patients are the ones to say “you do this in real life as well, don’t you?” It’s never the other way around.

We have been fortunate enough to work with incredible real-life doctors, OBGYNs, registered nurses and physician assistants.

Every new member of staff has to undergo a long, scrutinized period of evaluation and training that includes specific questions to confirm their real-life medical background. Following these specific questions, It is typically very easy for us to determine whether they are being truthful or not. Despite their background, working at Hands On Care requires adhering to some very specific guidelines. Adapting to these guidelines

requires a bit of getting used to, even for the greatest of experts. We do this to allow even those patients who have already had up to 9 pregnancies with us, to always receive the same level of core medical care - that “HOC” factor. With that said, I always push for our doctors to be themselves, unfiltered and to show the pure nature of their personality. Their colors and shades of truth are beautiful.

Lanai Jarrico: I could not do this interview without going through the full experience myself so from my personal experience, you and your team are very knowledgeable and professional. I would highly recommend your services to those who want to experience pregnancy, labor and delivery in SL. With all the fantastic services Hands On Maternity Clinic provides, I am particularly excited about your newest product which I was able to Beta test. From what I experienced the Hands On Mommy HUD is compatible with all the mesh bodies and conception HUDs like Mama Allpa! Can you please tell us more about this impressive new product that is currently still in the Beta phase and when it will be available?

Dr WilliamOwnes: Hands On Mommy means everything to us, it is years and years of work condensed into one incredible product. We’ve been actively working on it for 3 years now and I promise you, it’s worth all the wait. The reason why this product is so special is not only because of our knowledge in the maternity field, which allowed us to create an incomparable “active role-play” feature for unprecedented realism, but also because we have seen thousands of mommies over the years. This has put us in a unique position to understand exactly what is missing to enhance the realism of their pregnancies from a second life technical point of view. We learned how much people care about having choices and adaptability, for instance. Therefore, the goal was creating an unprecedented, immersive, interactive and animated pregnancy journey that each of our very diverse mommies could use and customize. A product that could work with everything they have in their inventory, whether it is their favorite conception HUD, their favorite mesh body, their favorite brand of future newborns/toddlers or their favorite clothes. Well, we did more than that! Hands On Mommy can work with or without any gestation HUD. Being pregnant (even multiple times) and setting/changing the timeline of your pregnancy is incredibly easy - it comes at no additional cost.

For those who use Mama Allpa, which is over 98 % of the maternity community in Second Life, we even created the option of automatically matching their Mama Allpa pregnancy time frame in just a click! This was not easy, we had to collaborate with the wonderful Tantrica (the owner of mama allpa) and get ours and her scripting to communicate. But I am so excited that we managed to do it, I know how important this feature will be to thousands of people!

Some people have advised us to add “limitations” on the number of free pregnancies and on all the free “task-related” objects that we included. They suggested to simply re-create everything from scratch to make a greater margin. We purposely decided not to do so, not only did we want Hands On Mommy to be built around the preferences and the needs of our mommies, we wanted it to also be sustainable and convenient from a financial point of view. Consequently, it’s going to mostly be a one-time payment (likely around 5k lindens). One payment that will basically provide you with everything you’ll need for all your pregnancies to come, including access to some amazing “‘mommy areas” of our sim and dozens of pregnancy specific items that we created specifically for our “Hands On Mommy” tasks.

Really, I could speak for years about this product, it has so many unique visual, role-play and interactive features - you need to watch the videos and follow our Facebook page! There will be more videos out soon and we also have a few secret partnerships in the works. Hands On Mommy, is simply setting the bar higher than it’s ever been - It’s truly a game changer.

Lanai Jarrico: I use the Lara body from maitreya and the HUD worked well for me. How does the HUD work with other mesh bodies? Does it automatically grow their belly with gestation?

Dr WilliamOwnes: One of the cool things of “Hands On Mommy” is that It will work with all of Second Life’s mesh bodies. Meaning you will also get to keep all your existing inventory. As far as the belly is concerned, we created some amazing belly growth animations that automatically progress with your pregnancy. If you choose to use these animations, depending on your avatar’s body type and shape, you may need to add a little bit of torso length or body fat (just like in RL) to achieve a rounder belly look and to make room for the baby in a realistic way. Yet, if you are using a body that comes with a pregnant option or if you would rather use some specific pregnancy shapes or a mesh baby belly, you can totally turn the “belly grows with baby” animations off. The same goes for 2 incredible automatic features that we also offer “curves grow with baby” and “belly moves with baby”(which actually allows you to see your belly move as the baby kicks - it’s adorable). In real life all pregnancies are different, in second life all bodies and shapes are different. We wanted to give you the freedom of deciding whether to use our “belly animations'' or other options that may better match your preferences. There is no “perfect pregnancy” recipe - nonetheless you’ll have the freedom to achieve your own vision of “perfect”. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Lanai Jarrico: I used a Mama Allpa. It is compatible with all the conception HUDs, How does it sync with the gestation period? Or can you customize it to fit the length of the pregnancy?

Dr WilliamOwnes: Yes! it can work with all of the existing gestation HUDs and, for those that use Mama Allpa (by far the most popular gestation hud), it can sync in just 1 click! We worked really hard to make this happen. It can also work WITHOUT a gestation HUD and the timing of a pregnancy can be fully customized, sped up or changed unlimited times at NO additional fee. If you don’t want to sync your Mama Allpa, it’s very easy to manually change the timeline of your pregnancy. All you have to do is click the “change timeline” button and write 1) In How many RL weeks you would like to give birth and 2) How many RL weeks along you currently are (or want to be).

Lanai Jarrico: One of the features I find really impressive is the ability for the Mommy to be to share the experience more intimately with their partner. How does the HUD work for both to interact in the pregnancy experience?

Dr WilliamOwnes: Adding a partner is not mandatory, we know of some amazing single moms that manage everything on their own. But for those who can indeed count on the help of a partner, we wanted “Hands On Mommy'' to truly redefine partner interaction. In just a click (on the mother’s belly) partners will be able to see how mom is feeling (whether sick, weak, good or radiant) and whether mom has taken her daily prenatal vitamins and water. Based on that, partners can remind mom to do her tasks and take her daily water/vitamins, partners can also do activities that actually help mom feel better. These include, giving mommy a snack, petting her belly, kissing her belly and even taking her to our mommy relaxation area or mommy spa. That’s right, in just a click partners can automatically give mom a teleport to some cozy areas (that we have opened up to everybody who has “Hands On Mommy''), help her do some yoga or even give her a relaxing massage. We have not just created some amazing partner options, we opened entire areas of our sim dedicated to partner interaction - we wanted it to truly be special.

Lanai Jarrico: What other features does the Hands On Mommy HUD offer?

Dr WilliamOwnes: They are really too many to mention, but I will try naming a few. First of all, we managed to make the animated fetuses resemble both you and your partner! To do so moms can input their and their partner’s traits of appearance (eyes, skin and hair color) and “Hands On Mommy '' automatically matches both genetic assets (of mom and dad), making a realistic, random combination. For example, if you are white skinned and your partner is dark skinned, the baby won’t be either white or dark, it’ll be a realistic mix of the two colors, just like it would be in real life. On top of that, we also included an “appearance” HUD to manually change features of your fetus - if you really want the baby to have blue eyes for instance, it can be done in just a click. Mommies can also customize the overall appearance of the fetuses. If you would rather not see the placenta, the amniotic sack or the uterus, you can quickly “hide” those parts. Additionally, we added tons of mommy features! We wrote the lyrics and recorded many “pregnancy themed tunes” that you can sing to the baby (it’s adorable), we also included a “Home Doppler'' for you to have the unique experience of listening to the baby’s heart, included a contraction section, a baby development update section, a kick count feature (often done in real life to measure how active the little one is), the ability of preparing and using your “hospital bag”, a “mommy survival kit”, BOM ``pregnancy line” skin tattoos, BOM pregnancy stretch mark tattoos and more!

Lanai Jarrico: Thank you for letting me be part of the beta testing and sharing this product and service here in Second life. I’m sure it will give many couples an amazing experience. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

Dr WilliamOwnes: It was a pleasure! I do have 2 very big announcements to make.

We hardly ever mentioned the birth so far, but it will be an incredible part of Hands On Mommy that we are about to reveal! First of all, you can initiate everything by going into labor directly from the “Hands On Mommy HUD”. This is done by starting your contractions (either early labor, active labor or transitional labor contractions).

Addressing the birth, “Hands On Mommy” comes with a birthing experience that we will use in our clinic (and likely also sell as a part of an advanced, expensive, “doctor kit” only to extremely experienced, passionate and professional clinics). This will allow you to give birth and hold the baby you have been growing inside of you! This system is huge, it includes doctor animations, baby animations, mommy animations, partner animations and doctor control over different phases of the birth. By the time Hands On Mommy will be released, we will have the new birthing system in all of our birthing suites and it’ll be included in all of our packages in the clinic. While Hands On Mommy will initially only support “single pregnancies”, the birthing experience will allow to also give birth to multiple babies at no additional cost! For the single mommies or couples that would rather give birth on their own, we are also looking at including (at no additional cost) a simpler, natural “home birthing” system!

Moving on to our second announcement, I have never discussed this before but we have been actively working with one of the largest companies of advanced bento female genitalia in Second Life. They are working on a huge, incredible update of their bento vagina and it’ll include full compatibility with Hands On Mommy! I cannot revel much yet, but this partnership will allow us to interconnect Second Life sex, adult partner roleplay, Mama Allpa (optional), “it’s not mine” (optional) and our pregnancy journey, in a way never even thought possible before.

What I can reveal is that your water will actually break and your bento vagina (if you decide to use it) can automatically begin dilating and opening at the right time of the birthing process. Their dedication to the product is incredible, they’re experts in that field and I’ve also seen other features they have been working on for months, and I can tell you, it’s going to be unbelievable!