The Birds and The Bees Talk

Grace has been very curious lately as to exactly how babies get into mama's bellies. She's 7 1/2 if you remember.

She actually got an eyeful last year thanks to a pregnancy and childcare book I forgot I had. When Bryon painted and redecorated her room for her birthday last September, I piled all of her books from her book case in the entryway including that pregnancy and baby care book. My dad had gotten it for me before she was born. Now it was just in a stack on top of her book case used to prop up dolls for viewing.

I had forgotten all about that book.

As I moved the piles into her room after the redecorating was finished, I insisted that she be the one to organize her books back on her book shelf. It was a ridiculous plan because I knew I'd end up reorganizing them due to my Type A, slightly OCD obsession with that bookcase.

After a while of working on the project, she came out holding THE BOOK and said, "Mama, this is like a doctor book! Look!"

Sure enough there was a picture of a fuzzy little, dark haired baby crowning between a mother's legs. It was not cartoony. It was real.

You can imagine the questions that followed. I told her the truth. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it's messy, etc. etc.
At that point it was plenty of information, and mercifully she didn't ask how it got there in the first place. Whew!

This summer she's begun to put two and two together and has been asking much more specific questions. At first we just told her she wasn't old enough to know yet, but like her mother (ahem), she's persistent. She started pummeling Nana with the same questions.

Bryon took a poll of parents at his work and it was unanimous that if she's asking questions it's inevitable that someone  would eventually give her answers right or wrong. And that someone might as well be us. Several of the parents recommended this book, Where Did I Come From? 

Bryon found the book and last night he read it too her. Brave, brave Daddy! I came in at the tail end for the big finish: birth. She didn't ask too many more questions. It was pretty specific and explained everything. In great detail. With all the correctly named body parts. Bryon told her that all animals (mammals) basically do it the same way. Like the chickens and rooster in our yard.

Every time she sees that rooster going after a hen she thinks they are marrying.

No more.

She did ask if that's why they squawk all the time. Yes, yes it is. She also asked why people don't make sounds. Well, we did manage to avoid that one.

Bryon explained that this was private information and not to be shared with all of her classmates because some parents do not want their kids to know about all of this yet. She agreed to be the keeper of the truth about creation.

We'll see if it sticks. By the end of August we'll be the heroes or the villains for telling her the truth and not letting her learn on the bus like everyone else.

I just saw the same author has a book for puberty too.

Thank God.