Where do babies come from? It’s the classic question, the one we all anticipate when we have kids. I have to admit I’ve always taken the cowardly route when it came to answering my daughter’s questions about how she emerged from my tummy into the world. Since I had the aforementioned C-section, I could show her the little scar and say she came from this little “envelope.” I never said that doctors carved through skin and muscle to pull her out of my womb, but then again, that classifies as TMI for one of such a young age, in my opinion.
So recently, when I was being tag-teamed by my daughter and her cousin (she’s 6, too) my palms started to sweat. It started off innocently enough with talk about sweet little babies, but it quickly turned to my niece asking, “So how do babies come out, anyway?” We were in the car together and I briefly considered turning up some tunes to drown out the question.
But I sucked it up and … immediately went to my default envelope story, buying some time. My niece called me on it: “I don’t think that’s how me and [my little sister] came out.”
“True. That’s true, I told her,” briefly remembering each of my niece’s births. I was hugely pregnant with Ladybug when eldest niece was born (the cousins are six weeks apart) and I couldn’t help but recall how the nurse twirled the newborn’s long dark hair – while she was crowning. That story never fails to get an “Ugh” from my sister, who was too busy pushing to see it.
But enough with memory lane, I had to think fast. I knew if I didn’t tell them the truth they’d be old enough now to know I lied (and, alas, they will definitely find out how babies are born someday). So I squinched my face up and said briefly: “There’s a special opening near your bottom that babies come out of.” Yes, I know the experts tell you to use the proper anatomically correct words, but I couldn’t seem to find that very special word in my vocabulary at the moment.
“UGH!!!” they both cried in unison.
Then my niece noted: “I don’t want to get married. It might hurt to have a baby!” Then she followed up with this gem: “I think if you pray real hard you won’t get a baby in your tummy.”
Ladybug explained to her cousin that getting married doesn’t require one to have a baby. Hmm. Maybe she knows more than I realized and I won’t have to answer the next, inevitable question: “How did the baby get in there, anyway?”
Seriously, isn’t this a hard one? So what did you tell your kids when they asked where babies come from? You had to have done a better job than me, right?
*Ladybug fairy photo courtesty of A Kid’s Heart website
