The tough questions

Sunday afternoon I called my wife on her cell phone to ask her a question. I said this exactly: “I’m going to ask you a question and I’d like you to be completely honest with me. Why me?” Don’t panic. The rest of the story is actually pretty funny.

My sister-in-law was scheduled for a c-section on Tuesday the 22nd. Saturday night my wife and I dropped The Peanut off at her grandmother’s house and spent the day getting caught up on the house work and just hanging out together. We had planned to spend some time together on Sunday too, picking The Peanut up after lunch.

Naturally on Sunday morning the phone rang at 7am. My sister-in-law had gone into labor late Saturday night and had already had her c-section at a large hospital in downtown Detroit. Her seven year old daughter Riley was at home asleep, being looked after by her adult half-brother. A plan was made. Mona and I would head to my sister-in-laws house where I would pick up The Peanut and Riley and take them to our house. Mom and Mona would head down to the hospital.

OK, no problem. I can handle this. So I take the girls back to our place, feed them lunch and then we head downstairs to watch movies and play. Riley, out of nowhere, tells me that she’s worried about her mom and baby sister because the baby was early. Riley was something like 8 weeks premature. She spent some time in the NICU and is still somewhat frail. So I had a talk with her and explained how babies grow and the difference between being 8 weeks early and 2 days early. I even showed her some pictures (drawings) in my anatomy text book. That seemed to make her feel better.

A little while later it’s time for The Peanut to nap.

A bit after that, Riley asks for a snack. So we head up to the kitchen and I whomp up a PB&J. As she’s eating, Riley looks at me and asks “How do babies come out?” Shit. The Peanut is a year and a half old. I shouldn’t have to have this talk with a little kid for years yet. I chickened out, and since I knew that Riley was aware that her mom was having the c-section I told her that her mom was having an operation. She pointed to a spot on her tummy and asked “from right here?” She was pretty much in the right spot, so I said yes, feeling good about answering her question and dodging a bullet at the same time. She took a few more bites and then (I bet you saw this coming) asked “What about other times?” Shit, shit, shit!

I believe in telling little kids as much as they want to know when it comes to basic facts, and I try to overestimate how much they’ll understand. I didn’t want to have this talk, but I felt that lying to her with some kind of cabbage leaf / stork story would be wrong and telling her to ask her mother would also be an act of moral cowardice. So I took a deep breath and went and got the anatomy book again.

It had a cutaway drawing of a birth. I pointed out the basic land marks, “here’s the mommy’s leg, here’s her tummy” and showed used a teddy bear alongside the book (there was no stand-in for the mommy) to explain it. I know I showed her where the pee comes from, where the poop comes from, and how the baby came from a spot in between. She said “From the privates?” I said yes, and asked if she had any more questions. She didn’t and we went back to playing pac-man.

Later, I called Mona and asked her “Why me?” She laughed and gave me some sympathy. Then Riley asked to talk with Mona and proceeded to ask her the same question over the phone. I ended up apologizing to Mona and trying to explain that I had no idea that was coming.

The next day was MLK day, and since I was the nearest family member who wasn’t working I went to the hospital to help my sister-in-law with her newest, Hannah. If you haven’t had a baby in a while, you might not know that a lot of hospitals leave the baby in the room with Mom unless they need to run a test. New parents do all the feeding, changing and comforting right from the get-go. I didn’t do much since the S-I-L was still on pain killers most of the morning, but I ran little errands (get me some ice chips) followed the baby to the nursery when she got her 24 hr. blood work done and passed her to the S-I-L when it was feeding time. No big deal.

In the afternoon the nurse pulled the IV morphine and my S-I-L started to become more alert. Once she was awake I teased her a little and told her she owed me for the conversation I had with Riley. She didn’t laugh, but she did tell me that she and Riley had talked about this already.

It seems that Riley knows what happens, but I don’t think she wants to accept it. And I suppose that’s OK, since she’s, you know, seven.

So how did I do? What would you have done? Have you ever been caught off guard by a kid with a Serious Question? How did you handle it?

I’m interested to hear all your storys.