Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Some Sort of Special Drawer?

The other day Dex and I were driving in the car we were listening to the Moth Story Hour on NPR. A woman was telling the story of preparing for the birth of her first child. In predictable fashion, she first explained how she had it all meticulously planned out. She had read all the books and decided how she wanted this birth to go. She even made 30 laminated copies of a typed 8 page detailed plan for everyone in the hospital about how she didn't want any medications, wanted a totally natural birth, no instruments, etc. But after 30 hours of painful labor she was hooked up to every device in the hospital with pain medication zooming through her veins.

As she began to talk about how different the experience was with her second child (she no longer felt the need for total control), Dexter quietly asked, "Does it hurt to have a baby? Did it hurt when you had me?" I explained that it does hurt when a baby comes out, and that it did hurt when he was born but that the pain is only for a little bit and then there is a lot of joy and relief when the baby arrives and when he came out Daddy and I couldn't have been more excited and happy. Thinking I could turn this into a learning moment about the importance of facing challenges rather than avoiding them I added, "sometimes the most important things in life are difficult but they sure are worth the effort." For a few seconds I thought I was off the hook. But then he asked, "Do you have some sort of special drawer?"

How does one respond to this?!  I wanted to laugh but I didn't want to make him feel foolish. I wanted to make sure he didn't have the wrong idea in his head but I didn't want to go overboard with details. Finally I said, "It's more like a baby gate. Girls have a place on their bodies where the baby comes out." Of course the next question was, "where?" I explained that girls have that place between their legs. "Can I have a baby?" "No, boys can't have babies.  Girls and boys have different bodies and only girls can have babies." "How does the baby get in there?" Oh Geez, here we go... "Moms and Dads share a special kind of love and the difference in their bodies allows them to make a baby together. But the baby only grows in the Mommy." I waited a couple seconds for the next question. But it never came. At least not yet.