the unintended consequences of pregnancy

You know how in life there are often times you do something and then something totally unexpected happens because of it. Well I have been pregnant 3 times before this so you would think that I would know everything to expect, the sickness, backaches, hip soreness, inability to breathe, general grumpiness, etc. Well with this pregnancy I was hit with another one. I was driving my eight year old daughter to her piano lessons when out of right field, boom, she hits me with this question "mom, in the olden days how did women know they were pregnant?" I just sat there.... uh uh stall stall. "Hmm" I thought as I prayed that the light would quickly turn green, "how do I answer this in a sweet innocent way". So lamely I said "I don't have time to tell you since we are almost there so I will have to tell you later", I know avoidance. So I went home and told my husband and we tried to think of anyway to answer this question without flat out lying with something corny like "the stork sent them a letter telling them so" (which probably wouldn't work on her since she figured out the whole Santa Claus/Easter Bunny thing a long time ago) or having "THE TALK"!!!!!!!! Now some of you smart ladies out there who all ready have kids are saying right now "wait a minute how did you avoid baby questions with your last baby when she was five"? To all of you I say "good question". You see it is a lot easier to give a very innocent watered down answer to a five year old, cause at that point in a child's life they are nice and sweet and think their parents know everything. So when I was preg with #3 and she asked how the baby got inside me I just said "daddy put it there" and she was just fine with that answer. When my sister's little boy asked how her baby was going to get out she just told him "mommy has a hole down there that the baby comes out of" (I think I got that right, she can correct me in the after comments if she would like) and her son was fine with that. However, that kind of stuff doesn't work now because sometime in the last 3 years she has figured out that we don't know everything. Probably because half the questions she asks me I have to answer "I don't know" to. I mean how are we parents supposed to know all this, I have my degree in social work not physics, zoology, astronomy, or biology. So of course kids feel fine asking how hot the sun is, how can you tell the difference between different dinosaur bones, why don't sharks ever stop swimming, and I just say I don't know, but the minute she asks me the five stages of grief I will have the answer! (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance, see I really do know). So anyway this brings me back to the whole point of this blog which is that we figured it was time for THE TALK!!!!.
So I sat down alone with her and told her I was going to answer her questions she had been having about babies. Then I asked her if she knew what sex was to which she said yes. So I asked what she thought it was to which she replied "love" to which I replied "no, sex is not love" then I told her basically what it was, to which she replied "gross" with a horrified look on her face. Then we talked about how this related to making babies and that led to the whole description of what a period was to which she had an even more horrified look on her face and said "that's scary". So I tried to calm her fears and say it was all normal to which she said "can we talk about something else now". So I tried to hurry and wrap things up by hitting hormones, body changes, and how someday she would want to have sex but to WAIT UNTIL SHE WAS IN LOVE AND MARRIED. To which she agreed, of course I thing she would have agreed to having her teeth drilled without Novocaine if I would just stop talking. So anyway I have now passed one of those major parenting hurdles and I can honestly say it was way worse for her than it was for me and for the first time in recent history my daughter who is usually full of questions had her lips shut tight.
It was funny cause it made me think back to when I learned all this wonderful stuff. I remember in first grade I had a friend tell me what sex was and I absolutely didn't believe her, not even a little bit. Once in kindergarten I was playing at my friends house and she told me that french kissing was when you put your tongue in someone else's mouth. I didn't believe her so we went down stairs and turned on the tv to whatever day time soap was on and carefully studied the kissing to see where the tongues were, and sure enough there were tongues in mouths! I was horrified and thought it was the grossest thing in the world. When I told my husband this story he said he was glad I had gotten over it (he can be a funny boy). I honestly don't remember if my parents ever had THE TALK with me. They very well could have and I have just repressed it to the deep dark reaches of my subconscious, which is what I think my daughter has been doing today.