Why does ds always ask dreadfully long / involved / fearsome questions at BEDTIME <aaargh>

[FrannyandZooey]

and "I will tell you tomorrow" just NOT going to work....

Tonight I had to explain the mystery of childbirth after he had been reading a book about birds hatching

"How does a baby person get to be born, Mummy? Does it peck a hole in your tummy?"

"No..."

"Well how DOES it come out?"

"HOW??? HOW does it do that? How does it stretch? Does it come out sideways Mummy, how how how how how.....?"

Cue demonstration with a plastic baby and the sleeve of my t-shirt. Boy oh boy I have never needed a knitted uterus before now but I did tonight...

Oh yes I had a question, as well - I have a fab book with full on pictures of foetus in utero etc plus very graphic birth pictures - quite powerful ones - would you show these to a nearly 4 year old who was interested, or if not, at what age would you think it was a good idea?

Have you got this book HC, the Nilsson one? It is fab and I think The Book People were doing it for about 7 quid or something

The one photo in it I cringe at is the huge placenta being held up - too visceral for me

we moved swiftly past that one, for my sake

Look here it is, for a fiver

It is a stunning book

I don't think there's anything wrong with children seeing pictures of childbirth, I really don't. The "blood and gore" of childbirth is in such a different context to that of violent pictures of death. My mum always had pregnancy books lying around when I was little, I loved looking at them. I only remember being fascinated, never scared.

I get these questions at bed time too! After I stood there stunned and have my mouth open not knowing how to answer one to many times we decided there are 'day time questions' and 'night time questions'. Yes or no answers are ok at night but for those questions you need to research before you can give an answer, they are definately day time questions. Write it down and get to it the next day.

ooooh a fiver, that's fantastic. i remember those pics being in the sunday times when i was a wee girl, i kept that mag for aaages.
i was absolutely in thrall to the birth thing by the time i was four, would have been fine to see pictures i think.

my mum had that Miriam Stoppard book around when I was a kid, and I use dto look at the pictures all the time. There was one with a woman with her mouth open and my mumj told me she was singing .
I also used to look at the "emergency delivery" section in the St John's Ambulance handbook, just in case

I have ordered the book Franny! It will either make me broody or put me off doing it again

Oh, I found it breathtaking to look at it with ds and I still have no idea how the photos were taken (science not generally a strong point for me)

The sequence of photos of the woman's face giving birth is just classic - her face is so expressive and you can easily spot the moment when the baby's head is crowning

Salisshe the idea of day time and night time questions has made me LOL