Thursday, April 11, 2013

"Mommy, where do babies come from?"

Recently my three year old has been asking a lot of questions about my body.  He's still young enough that when I get out of the shower I don't hide if he's in the room.  That may have to change soon though and I'm dreading giving up my little bit of freedom to be able to walk the 10 feet from my shower to my dresser sans clothing. I knew that eventually he would start asking me where babies come from, but I didn't expect to have to have an answer this soon.

The other day Jackson asked "Mommy how do babies get out of your belly?" I was totally not expecting that question so I went with "through the birth canal". LOL  He repeated the words and then went on to something else.  Whew, I thought I had dodged a bullet.  I don't want to lie to him but he's way too young to understand too much. I thought "birth canal" was generic enough and when he is old enough to learn the details he won't have wrong information. It will just be called something else.

I played this scene over and over in my mind trying to think of how I would answer his next questions. I knew that couldn't be the end of it.  He's a curious little fella and he knows Momma always explains things to him. Well CBS Sunday Morning did the hard work for me.  I love to watch that show every Sunday and that day he just happened to be eating breakfast at the same time.  They were doing a piece on robots that doctors are using to practice their bedside manner.  As someone who has interacted with an OB/GYN with horrible bedside manner, I think this is a brilliant idea.

What I did not expect was for them to show a robot simulation of a woman having a baby (segment at about minute 2 of the video).  The bottom half of her was the robot part and the rest of her was a female actor. She was all covered up so all you could see was her feet sticking out and the doctor pulling the baby out. I didn't realize that Jackson was paying attention.  Next thing I know Jackson is looking at his feet.  I asked him what he was doing and he looked at me with a pouty look and said "I don't want a baby to come out of my FOOT!" I did my best to not bust out laughing. I assured him that babies don't come out of feet that he just couldn't see the birth canal from that angle. I think he got it but he just said "I don't like your show" and went back to eating his waffle.

He hasn't said word-one about it in a week. I'm sure this won't be the last of it. Anybody else have advice for how to handle these kinds of questions without lying or giving too much information?