When you did your child start asking about how babies are actually made?

[MummySam2017]

My Daughter is 8. She knows sperm is from Dad and the egg is from Mum and when they come together, a baby is made. This used to be enough and she’d move on with the conversation. She’s now asking how Dads sperm gets to Mums egg. She heard at school it’s from kissing. It was just before bed so I said we’d speak about it properly tomorrow.

Can anyone give me some examples of how you spoke to your children about this and how old they were?

My son knew about sex at about age 6. I am a midwife so he’d ask how the baby gets in and then out of the mum. I told him quite simply the man puts his penis in the lady’s vagina and that’s how the baby gets inside. He just shrugged and then asked what was for dinner 🤣
just be honest and we correct terms so not to cause confusion

Following with interest. DD is 6 and, a few years ago, asked how babies come out of mummys' tummies. I followed the "just be matter of fact" advice and calmly told her how they usually come out and, as she was an emcs, that sometimes babies need some help from the doctors, who make a small cut in mummy's tummy and get the baby out that way.

So...I'm not getting any grandchildren.

Trying to prep for the next stage of questions, I bought a book I saw recommended on here called "Mummy laid an egg". Which is perfect, apart from a double page set of drawings illustrating "some of the special ways mummies and daddies can fit together"which raises more questions than it answers (and will give her highly unrealistic ideas about the levels of athleticism involved in the process!). Any other recommendations would be most welcome!

About seven, so after that he knew what sex to make babies is and that sometimes people accidentally make a baby when they do it.

I am sharing this purely because it amuses me, not because it's helpful.

My female ex-partner and I told DD about how she was made (intra-uterine insemination, aka turkey baster) when she was quite small. She gathered the basics of this well, and educated her reception class about how two women go about having a baby.

A couple of years later I tried for a baby with a very repressed gay male friend of mine, of whom DD was fond. DD chose this time (she was 7) to ask me rather more about how babies were made. She watched some videos of blastocyst formation with me and we talked about IVF, and at some point she asked how mums and dads like her friends mums and dads had babies. So I explained that the sperm is made in the testicles, and little tubes carry it down to the penis, and a man can then use the penis to put it inside the woman's vagina, and it swims up into the uterus, and if there is an egg in the fallopian tube coming down from the ovary, the two might come together and make an embryo.

I was very proud of myself for keeping a reasonably straight face and nodding gravely when she explained yes, she knows about testicles, she's seen them on boys before.

Unbeknownst to me, she then decided to sue my gay male friend for extra info. He turned up rather white and drawn-looking to hand DD back to me as usual. We left his, and I asked DD if he'd seemed ok. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'I just asked him a bit more about testicles and so on, since he'd know better than you'.

(On a more serious note, I have also told DD more than I think some people do about the fact that babies don't always happen when we want them to. I told her that sex can make a baby by accident. But I also told her that, sadly, sometimes people can't have a baby when they'd like to. I think this is quite an important bit of sex education too.)

My DD 3 keeps saying God and an angel put a baby in her tummy and he is the King. I think she put too much faith in the nativity and church services over Christmas 😅

Am watching as I'll need to know how to explain it to her beyond "when a man and woman love each other..."

My dd is 5 but has never shown the slightest bit of interest yet in how babies are made. Even though I talk to her about how she used to be in my tummy (haven’t told her how she got there yet) she doesn’t seem curious at all

Mine had Mummy Laid an Egg from when my eldest was 3 as I was pregnant with my second child so this is something they have always known. There is a YouTube video of people reading the book if you want to look at it. Ds2's favourite line was the baby saying hello Mummy when it was born.

The best advice I can give is just like @SarahAndQuack be factual, name the body parts. But also remind her that parents are the ones to talk to their children about this before she announces to the playground how babies are actually made.

In schools there are children who start their periods in year 4 and onwards so there is usually one cubicle in the girl's toilets with a sanitary bin and a stash of sanitary towels with a member of staff. So even though your child may not show signs of starting she may have a friend who does.

As someone raised by a devout Catholic Mother who told me nothing I swore I would be matter of fact with my own children and answer any question they had. Anything. But I would not talk about Dh and I, just in general.

Be honest and answer what they ask as they ask, and don't avoid stuff (ie: avoiding the actual penis going in bit)

Its easy to find yourself fudging the truth a bit (especially as these convos always seem to take place at the most awkward moments, like when you're in the middle of trying to load the conveyer in tesco 🙄) but leaving info out because it's easy to just causes confusion and gaps in their knowledge which get filled in with rubbish by their mates at school.

In my experience kids accept the basic facts with a bit of surprise and then move on. They might have a think and ask for a bit more info another time.

One of mine, when told about babies coming out of the vagina, admitted she thought they came out of your belly button, which made me laugh.

An age appropriate book to look at together can help if you're struggling a bit.

I gave my 7yo son the book ‘kay’s anatomy’ without pre-reading it - wouldn’t have been my choice that he found out about sex from a book but actually it explains it very well.

I tried to casually ask him if he had any questions or wanted to discuss anything from the book. He said : actually YES. I DO have a question about the human reproduction chapter.
me: what’s your question?
DS: When there are identical twins how do you know which is the real one and which is the clone?

We did later discuss the actual process, I told him quite matter of factly without skirting around anything, because I think it’s good to establish it isn’t a taboo subject while he’s still too young to get embarrassed.