A Baby Story
Little Meems loves babies.
She also loves the programming on TLC. The Duggars' 19 Kids and Counting has been a favorite show for a while. She loves all those kids and the fact that the mom never yells.
Now she has discovered A Baby Story. Which, for her, is like a dream come true. Seriously.
And now we have some explaining to do.
Little Meems is quite possibly the most naive little 8-year-old on the planet. She's not one to question the logic of Santa, she blindly accepts that our Elf on the Shelf just happened to show up while Mommy was standing at the front door. She thinks the "S" word is "stupid." She just doesn't see the bad in the world yet, and that's good.
Meems has been content to believe that a baby grows in a mommy's tummy and when it's ready to come out, the belly button opens wide and the doctor pulls it out. She may have gotten that idea from me. When her little brother was born, she was only 2 and W was 4 and they weren't ready to find out the truth yet. If you've had a 4-year-old, you know they ask 10 gazillion questions a day and I was just too exhausted to answer truthfully.
The first time she watched it, she was so excited to follow along with the pregnancy of the new mother. Of course, the show follows the moms into the delivery room. Where she starts to deliver. And everything screeches to a halt.
I see it. I see her eyes grow wide, I see her mouth open and her brows knit in confusion and horror. She turned to me, and, unable to even form any words to describe what she's seeing, mouths "wha?"
So I have to explain to her how babies are delivered.
"And there's BLOOD?"
"Yes."
"And it comes out of your BOTTOM?"
"Yes."
"And you PUSH it, like POOP?"
"Well, yes and no. Kinda'."
Silence. The silence is pregnant (haha, no pun intended) with dread at the next line of questioning. I guess that, if she's ready to know about uteruses and things, then she's ready. I'm frantically going over how to explain it all to her in my head so that she understands and doesn't get freaked out.
"Soooo, what's that long thing that was wrapped around that baby's neck?"
"The umbilical cord."
"Oh, that's how the baby gets food from the mom." How did she know that?
"Yes. And then they cut it and it falls off."
"It falls OFF? What do you do with it then?"
"Well, some people keep it, some people throw it away."
"What happened to ours?"
"Well, Church ate W's, and the rest got thrown away."
She is sufficiently diverted by the thought of the dog EATING the umbilical stump that I know I'm safe for now. She has the info she needs to understand what she's seeing, and apparently it's enough.
"Mommy, it really IS a miracle, isn't it?"
Yes, Meems, it really is.
She also loves the programming on TLC. The Duggars' 19 Kids and Counting has been a favorite show for a while. She loves all those kids and the fact that the mom never yells.
Now she has discovered A Baby Story. Which, for her, is like a dream come true. Seriously.
And now we have some explaining to do.
Little Meems is quite possibly the most naive little 8-year-old on the planet. She's not one to question the logic of Santa, she blindly accepts that our Elf on the Shelf just happened to show up while Mommy was standing at the front door. She thinks the "S" word is "stupid." She just doesn't see the bad in the world yet, and that's good.
Meems has been content to believe that a baby grows in a mommy's tummy and when it's ready to come out, the belly button opens wide and the doctor pulls it out. She may have gotten that idea from me. When her little brother was born, she was only 2 and W was 4 and they weren't ready to find out the truth yet. If you've had a 4-year-old, you know they ask 10 gazillion questions a day and I was just too exhausted to answer truthfully.
The first time she watched it, she was so excited to follow along with the pregnancy of the new mother. Of course, the show follows the moms into the delivery room. Where she starts to deliver. And everything screeches to a halt.
I see it. I see her eyes grow wide, I see her mouth open and her brows knit in confusion and horror. She turned to me, and, unable to even form any words to describe what she's seeing, mouths "wha?"
So I have to explain to her how babies are delivered.
"And there's BLOOD?"
"Yes."
"And it comes out of your BOTTOM?"
"Yes."
"And you PUSH it, like POOP?"
"Well, yes and no. Kinda'."
Silence. The silence is pregnant (haha, no pun intended) with dread at the next line of questioning. I guess that, if she's ready to know about uteruses and things, then she's ready. I'm frantically going over how to explain it all to her in my head so that she understands and doesn't get freaked out.
"Soooo, what's that long thing that was wrapped around that baby's neck?"
"The umbilical cord."
"Oh, that's how the baby gets food from the mom." How did she know that?
"Yes. And then they cut it and it falls off."
"It falls OFF? What do you do with it then?"
"Well, some people keep it, some people throw it away."
"What happened to ours?"
"Well, Church ate W's, and the rest got thrown away."
She is sufficiently diverted by the thought of the dog EATING the umbilical stump that I know I'm safe for now. She has the info she needs to understand what she's seeing, and apparently it's enough.
"Mommy, it really IS a miracle, isn't it?"
Yes, Meems, it really is.
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