We gave the Nikki "The Talk." And when I say "The talk" it's exactly what you think. Since Kara has been pregnant she has asked a lot of questions, like, how big is the baby, how does the baby grow, where does the baby come out, and all that stuff, whereas I have been asking questions like "How am I going to take care of this one, and how am I going to keep Mollie from smothering it, and where is my Hair Gel?" The last question is answered by looking in Mollie's toy kitchen. She seems to think it looks like food and puts it in her refrigerator every day. She also takes my glasses.
Anyway, the big question finally came up "Mom, how did the baby get in there? And how are they made?" Also the big one "Why does it take a mommy and a daddy to have a baby?"
Luckily I didn't have to handle this one on my own... well I pretty much didn't have to do anything even though I was "prepared". Kara did most of the talking, probably because she is smarter about this stuff. I remember just before we got married she answered some questions that I had had for quite some time. It turns out Kara was just as terrified as I was about this whole situation and had absolutely no idea how to go about it.
So we got a book. Well actually we got three books, one on Amazon which helped us introduce the subject and kind of take away the awkwardness of the subject "How to talk to your child about Sex." and then we got two books by Brad Wilcox on the subject, one for little kids set up like a story book (I liked that one) and the other one for more pre-teen kids (talks about maturation and stuff like that). We opted for the story book, and it really was a good way to introduce it. The first book was great too, it just didn't give us any ideas on how to present the whole miracle of making a baby. It did however talk a lot about how AWESOME it is, and how we should not make it seem taboo, but be respectful of it.
So we got Nikki all excited to learn about it telling her that we are going to talk about it on Saturday night after the kids go to bed, and that it was really awesome. She kept asking for hints about it, and she even gave me her theories, such as "I think that a laser beam shoots down from heaven and goes into the mommy's stomach, but it can't go out her back, and then the baby gets transported there."
Sounds Legit.
We were worried it would totally gross her out. Stories heard from around the family include Nikki's cousin Jacob just shaking his head and saying "You mean you guys have done that 3 times?" (there are three kids in his family). Then there is also Kara's brother quoted saying "Mom, there has to be another way, you and Dad would never do that, would you?" At least seven times! My family sitting all the boys down in a family home evening and my little brother asking VERY specific questions and all the older siblings simply asking to be excused. And of course there was the night before the wedding night talk. That's for a later blog post. Like 15 years from now, or maybe never.
She was a little embarrassed. Each time we brought up something she would quickly chime in "yeah yeah I know" with the undertone of "lets speed this along please." I would like to say that I did a good job at explaining the whole thing, but in reality Kara did the majority of the talking, and I chimed in once in a while. I think I actually learned some new things as well.
We didn't cover everything, mainly because we didn't want to overwhelm her, but we covered the basics. We didn't cover any bit of puberty and all those fun changes to look forward to, but the very next day, she asked about it. So we are going to talk about that again on Saturday. I think this might be a weekly thing for us now. Some people work out regularly, we tend to talk about the birds and the bees on a weekly basis.
One last note. It was nice talking to her about it, before she had really heard anything, because there was no real embarrassment, just a great conversation. I heard that the older kids get, embarrassment and mortification increase exponentially. So we are going to get it out of the way early and let her have the freedom to ask questions and know that she will get a real answer, and hopefully it's a good alternative to lasers from heaven.
