My son asked me how babies are born. Not in a generic ‘where to babies come from?’ kind of way. But, specifically how do they exit the body. There are a few pregnant ladies in our lives at the moment, so this question wasn’t exactly out of left field, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it at 8 o’clock in the morning on the way to preschool before Mama’s even had a caffeine hit. Shit. My head was spinning; Do I tell him the truth? Is he ready for that? Will that open a whole can of worms he’s not ready for? Or maybe I’m the one that’s not ready for it. Shit. My husband and I go back and forth about how much to share with our kids after the whole death conversation we had with said son 6 months prior. We told him the truth and he didn’t sleep for a month. So, we slowly reeled it back and he got over it. Naturally, I was a bit risk adverse. I took a deep breath. Here goes nothing…
Me: ’They come out of their mom’s vaginas, honey’
Kiddo: ’Their ba-ginas?’
Me: ‘Yep’
Kiddo: Thinks about this for awhile then says ‘but ba-ginas are too small. How do the babies fit?’
Me: In my head: (Bahahahahaha)
Out loud: ‘Well, babies are pretty small remember’
Kiddo: ‘So the mom just goes to the bathroom and pees and the baby comes out?’
Me: ‘Not exactly. Babies are usually born in a hospital.’
Kiddo: ‘A hospital? Why?’
Me: ‘Well, because it hurts and doctors and nurses are there to help’
Kiddo: ‘It hurts?’
Me: ‘Yep’
Kiddo: ‘Like really, really hurts?’
Me: ‘Yep’
And what happened next shouldn’t come as a surprise, because anyone with kids will know that their memories would put an elephant to shame. I could blame the time of day, or that I was distracted with vaginas and flashbacks of childbirth, but just like that, before I even saw it coming, we started talking about…. you guessed it- DEATH.
