Mummy, how do you make babies?

I had just written a complete blog post all about my heady day in which my washing on my proudly erected washing line got soaked in a thunderstorm. I also wrote all about my delightful trip to the breast clinic for a cursory fondling. I moaned about British people moaning about the weather. And I pointed out that I was feeling lethargic thanks to a carb induced coma as a resulting of eating too much left over pasta salad. But for some reason, blogger decided that it wasn't worthy of posting and so failed to save it and simply deleted my post. Which was a little frustrating, given that although the subjects weren't incredibly exciting, they did have a good rant quality to them.

But I cannot be arsed to try and remember what I wrote. So I shall instead relay the conversation I had with my eldest son during bath time (luckily it just wooshed loudly over the little one's head). It went like this:

son: 'Mummy, how do you make babies?'

me: (nervously wonders whether 4.5 is too young to be telling him about the birds and the bees but not managing to think of a very good reason to lie other than that he'll be the kid telling the other kids all about it at school and I'll have several parents ringing me asking why my child was telling their child obscene stories during breaktime). So I thought I'd go for an honestish answer and said: 'You grow them from a seed.'

Cue very puzzled look from son. 'Well how does the seed get in your tummy?'

Good, so that worked well then.

Trying to postpone the inevitable I asked: 'How do you think the seed gets in my tummy?'

son: (ponders the problem for a little while and then says) 'Do you put it in through your belly button?'

I should have just said yes. I should have. And left it at that. But I decided that really, what's the use in lying. He's only going to be picked on mercilessly when he's at school and he tells someone that the way babies are made is via your belly button.

So, taking a deep breath in, I said: When you become a grown up man, your willy will be able to make a type of water that carries the seeds in it. And (even deeper breath) daddies put their willies into mummies girly bits to make the seeds go into mummy's tummy.

And the two of them fall about laughing. Me fearing the worst that this is going to now be repeated to all of their little pre-school friends, wait for the hysteria to stop. 'Water with seeds in it from our willies. Ha ha ha.' The bit about the willy and girly bits seems to have been ignored in their mirth having discovered yet another exciting thing that their willy can do.

Once the jollity had calmed down, he asked: 'But is the baby inside the seed?'

'Well sort of, but it doesn't look like a baby,' I attempt to explain, not really wanting to go into how the sperm finds an egg and then splits into a bunch of cells. Probably a bit Too Much Info. So we then discussed how our tomato seeds didn't really look like tomatoes before they were planted but now they've grown into big green plants and that babies grow the same way.

He considers all of this for some time and then says: 'So when the babies are grown, can we eat them?' I felt like saying, in some cultures they do mate, and well done them. But I didn't.

And after that, I feel I deserve wine.