Im aware that there have been notable other threads on the topic but this is my own suggestion angle on what id think would benefit the game with so much relative ease you could probably mark it as a minor suggestion with some behavioural/UI changes and a item addition.
A large issue i find with other races, and certain trivialities with dwarves is that the general game rule is that only 1 child can be held by a mother at a time. The mother will constantly express distress over not being able to attend to two children at once, and this problem is exaggerated when you have custom/alternative races with multiple births that grow large families fast.
A crib is a object that can be made out of numerous materials as a piece of furniture to be placed down to put babies inside almost as 'storage' if for whatever reason the mother has to relinquish their hands or take up dangerous duties which will not distress them. Multiple babies from the same mother would end up in individual cribs (summarily allowing dwarves to have twins/identical twins without too much hassle) and between duties of putting them down and picking them up, may cycle babies or hold onto 1 baby pernamently.
Cribs can be placed anywhere to create domestic bedrooms (or left free to put any baby anywhere) but the main places to put cribs would be in personal holdings (personal bedrooms) and hospitals, both with functions in which to filter out which baby belongs where and to who, with the relevant community and family unit looking after the baby being fed.
- Babies inside cribs, within bedrooms are fed personally by the family and close friends (giving positive thoughts) except in emergencies and the baby has been unfed/unattended too long
- Babies inside cribs within hospitals are fed by a mixture of the community (doctors etc) and the family unit
Summary other small changes to maternity i would suggest are.
> Eggboxes can only be claimed by sentients if they are in a hospital area/room area owned by the sentient (otherwise barred from animals)
> Spare or orphaned babies (of any racial/civ kind/feral kind if sentient or semi sentient) can be put in cribs within hospital zones and adopted by dwarves into families, it is a public room where they can be attended to if there is no room inside the parent's own personal holdings and or the parents don't own a room.
- Orphans that were not related to fortress dwarf members (or fortress members) that aren't adopted will remain in your care as children then emigrate as a free citizen or go to live with their nearest relatives, they will be marked on the list to return to your fortress as visitors later IF they return and survive moving about the outside world, where they might go and make a name for themselves or be a candidate for a adventurer
> Adding cribs and nest box functions would also help races who lay eggs in worldgen to maintain populations as it allows them to lay eggs according to map plans if appropriate then have somewhere to deposit the children in cribs in order to count local site population and therefore growing world/civ population.
For example a little bit of map logic in if the room is occupied whilst the map is unloaded for the adventurer by a egg laying race put a eggbox in that room until their residency conditions change.
All of these changes would help streamline maternity mechanically and bring them in line with the existing games systems by applying interactions rather than wholly new mechanics. (though the exception to this would have to be a livestock separate adoption screen) And as always, rely on the community to take it to the next level and create goblin snatcher/forgotten beast baby lure-traps.
Feedback on the suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks
Other relevant threads> Cribs for infants (author - Scraggletag)(August 05, 2011)(600+ views)
>Maternity Ward+ supporting furniture and skills (author - Pinstar)(September 13, 2013)(Note - different to mine, but goes over ideas of giving birth in a hospital more preferable, personally i would have liked it if dwarves gave birth at their holdings if they could for a equal positive boost)(1300+ views)
>Dwarven cradle (author-Aslandus)(January 05, 2015)(Note - Most recent and similar to my own suggestion, this thread recieved a lot of positive feedback)(1000+views)