Statesville.com - Statesville Record and Landmark

HomeNewsEntertainmentSportsLifestylesOpinionCommunityWeather Online Tools Jobs | Real Estate | Shopping | Classified

Fun answers to 'where to babies come from?'

By Amy Fuhrman | Lake Norman Navigator

Published: August 28, 2008

In the absence of a real explanation, kids will often create wild ideas about how things work.

There's a little man under the road making the light turn red.

It takes a brown cow to make chocolate milk.

Those 'sugar bugs' that cause cavities on their teeth really are bugs.

A baby gets in its mommy's belly after she swallows it.

That last pearl of wisdom was dropped on me out of the blue last week by my 7-year-old.

He informed his 4-year-old brother, who was pretending to be a baby and wanted to get back in my belly, that he was now way too big for me to swallow. He explained to Ben that, since that was how babies got there, it just wouldn't work for him.

After I regained control of my overwhelming urge to laugh, I realized we had some serious talking to do.

For a while now, my husband and I have wondered how we'd know when the right time to have THE TALK would be. Well, now we knew. It was obviously way past time.

We sat him down and asked if he knew how babies were made.

"Does it have something to do with food?" he asked.

I told him no, then started by explaining that every mommy has an egg inside her.

"You're trying to tell me babies hatch out of eggs?" he said in horror.

Clearly, this was going to be a long conversation.

So we had the talk, offering as little detail as possible, but covering all the basics of who, what and why. He looked both fascinated and disgusted the entire time.

Somehow, my husband and I made it through without cracking up or blushing, even after my son asked, "So, do you have to take your pants off for that?"

Now that he had the facts, we asked him if he had any questions (he didn't) and explained this was something he wouldn't have to think about for years. We told him it was an act of love between two grown-ups.

He looked very relieved.

As he hurried out of the room, my husband and I gave each other a little high-five.

One awkward parenting moment down, 250 more to go.