How was "making babies" explained to you, as a child?

[Clawdy]

I was about ten, ( this was in the sixties ) and I came home from school filled with horror about what a schoolfriend had told me about how babies were made! Mum looked aghast, and tried to make it sound better.....She said men had to put their widgy in a lady's weewee ( weird names we used in our house! ). When I said "But that sounds horrible! " she said " Yes, I know, but if you love someone, you don't mind."

It wasn't. No conversation about periods either. Once it arrived, my mother bought sanpro. That was it.

Never needed to be told as such.

The rationale behind that was seeing wildlife programmes and being around animals as a whole, so it was assumed I'd work out that humans did it similarly. Which I did, more or less. Then school took over aged 11 with the actual pictures and a description of how 'both feel a great sensation of pleasure' if only it were that easy and I was chucked a copy of Lace to read that summer.

The thing that was weirdest about it was when I connected mammals feeding their young with bottle feeding 'why don't people do the same if we're mammals, too?' - 'Because we're, mammals, not animals'. Seemed that my knowing about sex and reproduction was fine, but knowing about breastfeeding was absolutely unacceptable.

My mum told me that sex is when two ppl, usually a man and a woman, "get very close together and become very excited".
I was very confused, but in retrospect I do think it's a lovely explanation and pretty accurate.

I think we went through it in quite a biological way in school. I remember being taught about condoms. I think we all just thought it was funny. I think before that I knew a man and woman came together and babies could result. There were 2 teachers at school who got together and there was that song X and X up a tree K.I.S.S.I.N G, first came love then came marriage then came a baby in a golden carriage. We wrote on the board Miss X loves Mr X and got a massive bollocking. Very educational though.

DD aged 5 came home from school and asked if it was true that Papa put his zizi in my zigonette (France). She clearly thought it was bullshit. Her next question was does it hurt? I ummed and ahhhd more for that one.

The explanation I got was quite interesting looking back and involved very little physical contact at all.

Mummy and daddy loved each other and decided to have a baby, so they sent off their request by holding hands and praying for a baby and then waited for a phone call. That phone call came one Sunday evening 9 months later to tell them that I was born, I basically was dropped into a cot in the hospital with my parents names, address and phone number and so they went and took the baby home.

Reality was my mother was hospitalised with preeclampsia for 3 weeks before I was born, she had a post partem haemorrhage and was put in to a medically induced coma for several weeks, I spent 6 weeks in the intensive care unit. We were both discharged from the hospital when I was almost 3 months old.

The periods explanation was just that I wasn't having a baby. I was very confused as a child, compounded by trying to ask questions in biology and getting shot down by the teacher, I wanted to know what an optic pregnancy was as one of my mother's friends had one, I was told by the biology teacher that it was ok as my eye couldn't get pregnant. This was pre Google so I had the wording slightly off as I meant etopic but got the word wrong.

@museumum

I knew pretty young that the dads Willy went into the mums vagina but I’d never heard of an erection and so to me willies pointed downwards, my imagination was utterly baffled as to how it went in.

I did cover that in my talks with my DDs.

Laughing at the idea of asking my Mum. Firstly she went to an all girls Convent School with Sisters (nuns) so the occurence of telling me these things would never have..occurred. Second she didn't get round to telling me what periods were, thought I was dying until I plucked up the courage to ask

No-one told me. I worked it out for myself at 16, with a bit of help from Jackie magazine.

I'm 29 and my parents didn't tell me anything. I saw a video in year 6 as 'sex education' though.

I must've been five. I wouldn't stop pestering my Mum, asking about where babies came from. She kept trying to give me age appropriate answers but apparently none of it was washing with me and I kept saying it didn't make sense. Eventually she told me that a woman has eggs in her tummy and a man has sperm which comes out of his willy. She said that the man has to put his willy in the womans vagina and the sperms comes out and goes to find the egg. Then the egg grows into a baby which is born out of the vagina. I remember her telling me all this in the dining room and thinking it sounded so horrible that she couldn't possibly have made it up!

We breed horses for a living. DD6 has spent a lot of time around the breeding sheds and understands how foals are made. She's put 2 & 2 together and worked out how human babies are made.

Me OTOH got a very embarrassed mother explaining about the birds and the bees when I was 9 in a very sanitised way.

I don't think it was ever explained to me. I just worked it out, maybe at about 10.

I knew a man and woman did 'something in bed' from an early age but didn't know what it was, wasn't really bothered tbh for quite a few years.

@spikyplants2021. My mum went to a convent school too. It left her completely unable to talk about any bodily functions, let alone sex.

By the time she had 4 dds, 6 dgds and a dggd, she could just about say the word 'period' in a stressed hiss, having checked over both shoulders that no-one else could overhear.

My mum got me a book about fruit flies that she'd ordered I think from the family planning clinic. It was very random...please someone say they had this book too, so I know I didn't imagine it ?!
It was a bit late really, at 10 I was already developed and reading books far ahead if my age, so had worked most of it out.

I have a vague memory of my mum telling me a doctor puts the egg into the mum and then the baby grows for 9 months and is born. Which I suppose is technically true, in some cases anyway. Very clever way to not tell the truth but not lie either haha!

I should add that I was a small child at the time. Once I was a bit older, she told me the truth.

In year 4 we had sec education a series of 3 videos. The first was about chicks hatching.
The second about farm animals giving birth and the third a woman giving birth and then a shadowy silhouettey sex scene and vague description so tbh I was a bit confused but figured out that going to a farm had something to do with human reproduction.

Then I read a book (usbourne?) and it had two ‘machines’ drawn in a cartoon style showing how sex worked but then I added sex robots to the whole farm thing and got more confused.

Asked my mum about it all but she told me tampons were for putting in your ears when you went swimming and seeing the description on the box about ‘heavy flow’ I thought that meant flow of the water ?
Needless to say I then refused to go swimming after that.

At brownies the older girls talked about sex and I was so upset and went home begging my mum to tel me it wasn’t true as it was so disgusting. She tried to explain but I could not understand how on earth you knew it was ‘done’ and did you just have to lie there very still and wait ? But for how long? And she wouldn’t tell me so I was absolutely baffled and imagined a man and woman lying very still to keep a penis in place till it was over but no idea how or when you knew a baby had been made

Year 7 was a revelation we had some videos of a Scottish couple discussing sanitary towels and tampons that were all over a coffee table and then a proper explanation of sex. But the whole class giggled so we had to stay in a break time to re watch it and if we laughed we were told we would watch it again till we could be mature

@DoTheNextRightThing

I have a vague memory of my mum telling me a doctor puts the egg into the mum and then the baby grows for 9 months and is born. Which I suppose is technically true, in some cases anyway. Very clever way to not tell the truth but not lie either haha!

Oh this was mentioned to me too and then I thought our gp might be my dad !

@SardinianLemon oh my! Although admittedly, once I saw the episode of Friends where Phoebe had IVF for the triplets, it cemented my belief of that being the way babies were made. Would've bet my life on it...

Never mentioned directly, the school did something on it each year from year 5 for which I was grateful as we had samples stuff for periods which meant I didn't have to tell anyone I had started initially.

When I did have to ask for some more Mum laughed at me or my embarrassment anyway. Never saw her the same after that.

Then when she discovered I was dating someone at 19 she tried to sit me down for a chat 🤣 absolutely pointless by then I'd been to the doctors for the pill etc. I just told her to bugger off I'm afraid at that point.

Blue Jeans magazine.
My 11 year old always asks me questions about sex. It opens up conversations about emotions, hormones and how you need to value yourself and how to avoid the red flags.

Clare Raynor book sorted me out at age 10!

Mum refused to tell me, I was about 8 or 9. Said if I wanted to know so much I'd have to figure out how on my own (that sounds so bad when I type it, she never meant go make a baby 😂). So I went to the library, found a book, came home and grinned smugly while telling my mum how babies were made.

I was given a book which explained the whole lot as a kid in about 2000