My children are still relatively young, and so I thought this moment would be years away.
I was so wrong.
My kids got THE TALK during lockdown. Because being locked down wasn’t traumatic enough.
Now I did not just spring this on them because I felt like ruining their innocence. It happened very organically, which was great… but resulted in some unfortunate terminology.
***Preface: My children know about DNA and genes and how a child is made of DNA from both the mother and the father.***
It all started with my highly anxious child. In October 2019, she became incredibly concerned about the welfare of the baby growing inside of her teacher’s womb. She asked ALL. THE. QUESTIONS. and she has some sort of 6th sense where she KNOWS if you have not given her every single piece of information available. So she learned about amniotic sacs and fluid and how they serve to protect a baby. She learned about placentas and how the baby doesn’t actually eat the food in a mother’s tummy, and why we have belly buttons and umbilical cords. She learned that babies live in a uterus and not a tummy, but that both are housed in the abdominal cavity. She learned that she has a uterus too, but hers is not ready to bear life. She was good.
Or so I thought.
Because during that conversation she asked how babies got into a uterus, and I said that God puts them there.
Wrong. Answer.
Because you see, my highly anxious child thought that at any minute, God would just put a baby into HER little 4-year-old belly. This is the same child that told me she did not want to go to Heaven because she thought you had to be crucified like Jesus was to enter. We corrected that flawed theology but were unaware of her pregnancy fears until much later.
May 2020 to be exact(ish).
Because that is when she dropped the bomb on us. She was crying and said, “I DON’T WANT GOD TO PUT A BABY IN MY BELLYYYYYY!” My poor child thought that God would just *BAM* put a baby in her now 5-year-old belly. That’s when I realized I messed up and needed to fix this.
“Oh no baby, that is not how it works. God will not just magically put a baby into your belly! An adult man and an adult woman have to enter into a special embrace and even then God might still not put a baby into the woman’s belly.”
Because this idiot was trying to use terminology from a Catholic parenting book.
“What’s an embrace?”
“A hug”
“WHAT?! YOU MEAN IF I HUG A BOY I WILL GET A BABY IN MY BELLY?!”
Dammit!
“No. So it’s a special naked hug.”
“WHAT?!”
“Yep. The man puts his private parts into a woman’s private parts. That’s how the DNA from the dad meets the DNA from the mother”
“What like a penis hug?”
“Um yeah. A penis hug. The penis is inserted into the vagina during this special embrace and sends DNA from the dad into the mother to meet her DNA. If they meet up, God can make that into a baby.”
And honestly, it was a relief. This conversation was finally out there. All my children heard it and could ask questions about it. And goooooooodnesssss we have had questions.
“Does it hurt?”
“Does this mean that everyone who has children did a penis hug? Even Grandma? Even Grandpa?”
“YOU DID HOW MANY PENIS HUGS?!”
Obviously, I did not respond with a number, merely reassurance that it was a normal part of married life.
It also segued into a discussion about menstruation. And childbirth.
“The baby comes out of WHERE?!”
Yeah. Fun times.
And of course, all this discussion happened on their dad’s first day back at work since lockdown. #thatmomlife
So Mamas, feel free to use my fabulous terminology of penis hug in your explanations about sex and reproduction. And laugh. Then have a drink.
