when did YOU find out where babies came from?

I was in 4th grade..probably 10? My mom told me, but I don't remember the context. Just that I was sitting on her bed while she was getting ready. And I decided that j would NEVER have babies because I would NEVER do that!

My parents never told me anything about anything. And I don't even have an age to point to because I pieced information together from various conversations and books (young adult fiction) over time. Having little correct information and lots of guessing and flat out wrong information is a very crappy feeling as a kid.

I'm sixty-eight and I found out when I was five. My next door neighbor, who was ten, had an aunt who was pregnant and had a cesarean birth. The neighbor kid told me that the baby grew in her stomach and they cut it out with a knife. I went screaming home to my mom and she explained how one gets pregnant and that there is a special opening to let the baby come out. I remember thinking ewww about the penis thing but her explanation explained the whole thing. Who knew, the penis thing is anything but ewww, ha.

My grandmother who lived a few doors down almost lost it when she found out what my mother had told me, a five year old. My mom was adamant that kids needed to know the truth. In those days I was one of the few kids who knew the real story.

Cause I know y'all really miss my incredibly entertaining stories of growing up on another planet...

When the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal came out--my mom asked *me* what oral sex was... I was 18 in 96...

I got the very basics around 12. Not much--just how babies were made. What scared me the most about sex as a teen was that my mom got pregnant at 15... 


masturbation. wrong. um I get why married guys doing it instead of having sex with their wives could be a concern. But why can't a guy do whatever so they can act like gentlemen and not have any um, embarrassments, is beyond me. 

I also don't get why women enjoying sex is to be feared--especially for Christians. Um, Song of Solomon... (actually the very fundamental cult didn't want unmarrieds to read it--ATTENTION ALL TEENS DON'T READ THIS BOOK!!!! Oh, and no thinking of pink elephants...) But then they also had weird rules about sex--not during her period, it's for procreation, the whole birth control stuff... Bizarro. 

I knew many girls who were in COLLEGE and still thought you could get pregnant by kissing. Yeah, no, girls would share with each other. Grown ups can be such idiots.

 for the bolded

Sex was a bad word when I was growing up. The best I got was an uncomfortable period talk on the front porch by mom around the time we got the period talk at school (you know, where boys would go in one class and girls in the other and they would watch a video). I never even told my mom when I started, she found a few days later when she finally noticed the wrappers in the trash. Besides that I remember when I was wearing a rather short skirt (probably around Jr. High age) my dad said "that's too short, you'll give boys the wrong idea". That was the extent of my sex talk at home.

I learned form a combination of literature, (thank you Judy Blume) older siblings and sex ed books my mom had.

She was on the committee to choose a book to use at my catholic grade school. I was probably in 5th grade... and so I snuck in her room and read all the books. Especially the one she wanted us to use that the priest vetoed. She was all for school teaching EVERYTHING she didn't want to have too talk about sex at all.

She never really told me about menstruation. I swear we didn't ever have the movie or the talk at school. I think they were in the midst of changing the curriculum and just skipped my grade.

When my older sister had "the talk" at school I sat in the room and listened, but I was told not to listen.. though I was right there! So I guess my Mom figured I had enough information. Because I had older sisters I didn't even tell my Mom when I started.

When I got married at 35, I had been living with my xh for about 7 or 8 months. At 35 my Mom asked me if we needed to "talk" about anything. I laughed out loud.


I would say it is completely different with my daughter... we talk about WAY too much, in my opinion.. but I have always answered her questions completely and honestly and correctly.  (when she was little I would often ask her a couple of questions so I was clear on what she was asking so I only gave her the information she wanted and didn't overwhelm here with way too much info.)

I was 8 months pregnant with my first and mum mum asked if I needed any information about prevention...a little late for that now isn't it?

yeah, NOT the most embarrassing moment with my mom. She used me as her confessor that she thought my dad was having an affair, counted his viagra, hired a detective, still wouldn't divorce him. but HE was the horrible person. 

my dad and I had a huge laugh after they divorced. he NEVER said anything bad about her. AND he encouraged me to forgive her and accept her warts and all. NOT for HER. 

for me. I swear, if he hadn't helped me, I swear, one of us would be dead by now. and I'm only homicidal in the mornings...

I'm a farm kid. I saw babies of all kind being "made" and born from a very young age. Not a mystery at all. 

I think I was in 5th grade. My teacher had a lot of classroom pets. One was a guinea pig that got pregnant twice during the school year. I remember making a comment to my mom after the 2nd pregnancy that "every time the guinea pig visited the pig in Mrs. So and So's room, ours ended up having babies." My mom said that she used that as the springboard for the conversation.

I had the talk with DS when he was in 5th grade. My husband isn't good at that type of stuff and doesn't explain well so I said I'd do it. We had a puppy that was getting fixed and I used that as an opportunity to talk about why we were getting it fixed, dogs getting pregnant, etc and then slid into the topic of humans.

Haven't told DD yet (she's in 5th this year, so we'll be doing so soon)

I think my mom would have preferred to drop dead over having that talk. She never told me anything about anything. My older sisters told me about getting their periods because they got theirs without any clue. One sister started in the summer, but the other one started at school and happened to be wearing light blue pants.   She said she didn't know what was happening so she went to her teacher (who was a nun), and the nun handed her some supplies and casually said, "You're not dying, you just got your period." 

With some little girls starting as early as 2nd grade (which seems horrific to me), I need to have a more in depth talk with my DD (6) about this stuff. One of her homeroom teachers this year is pregnant and is due in December, so I'm sure as that gets closer there will be more opportunities coming up to discuss it. DH's mom and dad gave him a picture book when he was about 8 that described everything in detail. LOL! He showed it to me when we were dating, and it was pretty hilarious reading it at that point. I kind of wish now that we still had it!