My Hilarious Birth Story

Birth stories are  hilarious. At least if you ask my kids.

The other day, I’m sitting between Ella (6) and Ezra (3) and the topic of pregnancy comes up. Someone we know is going to have a baby and suddenly the kids want to know all the details. We have our standard “Mommy carries the baby in her belly and then baby comes out and we care for it” blah, blah. This time, however, skimming over the “delivery” part wouldn’t do.

“But where does the baby come out of?” Oh, my.

We don’t skim over or feel embarrassed about talking body parts at our house. We use the actual names and  it’s no secret that boys and girls are built differently. Whenever I consider childbirth, however, I hear the voice of some acquaintance saying how she didn’t want to traumatize her young daughter by being too specific about where a baby exits from because imagining the logistics might scare her. Details haven’t seemed especially important, either, when half of the time my son pats my chest and asks if there’s a baby inside.

For some reason, though, I decided to go for it and explained in a very basic way exactly where baby emerged from. Were they impressed? Fascinated? Overwhelmed by the miracle of childbirth? Nah. The response: uproarious laughter! This wasn’t embarrassed or horrified laughter – these two were amazed by the sheer hilarity of it all. I never realized childbirth was quite so funny – even after giving birth 3 times.

Then Ezra asked my favorite question, “Well, what kind of pants did you wear?” Ella sat up and nodded, clearly acknowledging this as a very important detail.I told them “none” with a straight face, knowing this would be the funniest answer of all.  They did not disappoint.