Where babies come from

Today, when I dropped my T-bird off at school she took me by the hand to the book corner and took out a book called "How Babies are Made". "Come and read with me," she insisted.

I sat beside her and looked at the pictures with her. 

It started with flowers, went on to chickens (real birds and bees stuff), briefly looked at dogs and ended with human babies. The illustrations were clear enough whilst being suitably modest for the average 5 year old reader.

On the chicken page I asked her what was happening in a scene where a puffed out rooster was mounted on top of a hen. 

Air-bear piped in first, "He's going for a ride!"

"No!" said T, "They're laminating!"

I mulled over that one for a couple of pages.

We got to the dogs. "How about these dogs?" I asked. "What are they doing?"

"They're also lanimating," she answered.

That time I got it. "Oh, you mean mating?" She nodded. How did she know about that?

The morning at work I thought a lot about where my little princess's quest for knowledge had led her and realised that The Conversation was approaching us at a fairly rapid pace.

The Conversation. The one my mom had had with me where she asked me if I knew where babies came from and I said "uh, huh" and made a strange gesture of sliding the index finger of my right hand back and forth through the ring of fingers made by my left hand. I had hoped, at the time, that she would leave it at that, but she insisted that I explain what that meant - I realise know she was checking the accuracy of my facts.

My facts had been pretty above board for a 6 year old. The reason being that my best friend in nursery school had a dad who was a gynaecologist. In fact, we could even say "gynaecologist" which was quite a feat in itself when you're at an age where not losing your shoes in the wendy house is an accomplishment. So we knew where babies came from: mommies' tummies. We knew how they got in there and how they got out. Some days we would pour over her dad's obstetrical textbooks taking in each fascinating illustration: sketches of naked grown-ups (wide eyes!), an erect penis (giggle!) with a picture of a tadpole. Then little suns traveling through tiny tubes in an outlined woman's pelvis meeting up with a tadpole that disappeared into it. There in a watermelon pink cavity a multi-eyed pomegranate began to grow. The pomegranate disappeared after a while and was replaced by an amphibious alien with T-rex arms and a fishy tail. A couple of pages later the alien metamorphosized into what we were obsessed with at the time - a tiny little person doing miniature cartwheels in the belly of the outlined woman. Gradually the little person got rounder and fatter and we oohed and ahhed over the cherub that inflated the outlined woman's silhouette. Then the infant slid out of a grey sock stored in the woman's side-ways profile and mother and child were united at the breast (another giggle!). We were 5.

And this is where my passion for midwifery began. A fascination for the miracle of life.

Over the last few years I have thought back to that time and tried to imagine my precious sheltered children gaining the knowledge I had at their age. I shuddered every time. How was I going to teach them about reproduction? Surely they don't need to know about these things until they're 30?

So when we got home I broached the subject. "Tell me about the book we read this morning..." the conversation started. The rest of it went pretty well. She pulled her nose up to me saying yes when she asked if people "mated" too (that's good, right?). I said that we call it sex when we talk about people. She practiced the word a couple of times as though she was saving it for future reference (that's not good if it's in an unsuitable place - drat! should I have mentioned the "S"-word?). She didn't need a lot of information in the end. Just a couple of facts: Boy meets girl, boy MARRIES girl (I'm all for long-term commitment), penis and vagina, baby, and yes T, it does hurt to push a baby out. At which point Air-Bear said "Then I'm never having a baby!" 

Which is fine by me.