Monday, April 28, 2008

Where do babies come from?

I'm sure there's a lot of parents out there that dread the first time hearing their child ask that question. And as a married woman, someday I expect to hear the question and dread it as well. But what I didn't expect was to hear it now...like today.

For a clinical, we have to do a teaching project at one of the district 150 schools. My school was Whittier Primary, and I was supposed to teach about the heart to a classroom of 21 2nd grade students. It all went fine. We looked at life-sized models of the heart, and I gave them tennis balls to demonstrate how hard the heart has to work to pump blood. We also listened to our hearts with stethoscopes that I almost had to sign my life away to borrow from school. Anyway, I finished my whole thing, put everything away, and asked if anyone had any questions. I got some really good questions, like "what does heartburn have to do with the heart?" "What happens when your heart stops beating?" Nice questions like that. Then I nodded to one little boy who raised his hand and he dropped the bomb....

"Where do babies come from?"

I just stood there with my mouth open for a while, not quite sure what to say. And when I did speak, the only words that come out were "ummm." Thankfully, my teacher was in the room with me, and stepped in and gave a very nice, quick explanation that babies came from an organ in the body called a uterus. And that was the end of it.

3 comments:

Jenny said...

hahahaha you should have told him that santa brings them.

or that the hospital grows them in the basement.

or to ask his mom. :D

Traever Guingrich said...

you should have luke explain to you the process. i mean, you should probably know if you're going to be a nurse. and you're married.

the schros said...

i wonder if that was just the burning question of his life and he thought you looked like a nice enough person to not avoid him... like all the other weird adults in his life. and you blew it. thanks for the laughs :)