"Mommy, where do babies come from?"

The dreaded question. It's not that I didn't want to tell my 7-year-old all about how babies were made, but I thought I'd have a few years yet. He, unfortunately, had other plans.

"Let's start with what you know. Where do you think babies come from?"

He scrunched up his face in that thinking-hard look and then said slowly: "From … your belly?"

Close! The uterus. The uta-what? The uterus. It's the part of the body where babies live before they are born.

Do boys have uta-whatevers?

And here came the tricky part. My son is transgender, meaning that he was assigned female at birth and transitioned to male. How did I explain this process without including gender?

Because the truth is, some boys do have uta-whatevers. And some girls have penises. And there was a very real possibility that my son might give birth to a baby of his own someday and become a father.

But only if I managed to explain this process in a way that didn't scar him for life. So here goes.

"You remember how we talked about the different body parts that people have?"

"A bagina and a penis?"

"Vagina, and yes. Those parts are used in making babies." This ship was sinking fast. I tried harder. "We call them reproductive organs, and these organs produce different things. The penis makes sperm, and the vagina and uterus, along with some other parts, make eggs."

"Eggs?! Like a chicken?"

Well, yeah, kind of like a chicken, only these eggs don't come outside and you can't fry them up for breakfast. This was getting totally off track. I tried to refocus.

"A baby is made when the sperm finds the egg and fertilizes it. That's how you and your brother were both made."

My son stared at me for a couple seconds and I could see the wheels turning, the thoughts flying, the cylinders firing off. I was a little bit afraid of what was going to come out next.

"So a mommy makes an egg and a daddy makes a sperm and they put it together in the uta—"

Uta-whatever, but no, that wasn't quite right.

Sometimes mommies make sperm and sometimes daddies make eggs. Sometimes a baby has two mommies or two daddies, and that's a whole different process to make those babies. Sometimes parents can't make a baby at all and they adopt someone else's baby. Or doctors help them make a baby. Or someone else carries the baby for them in his or her uta-whatever.

For being one of the oldest, most primitive functions of life, having a baby was a really complicated process.

And trying to explain it to a 7-year-old was even more complicated. But I had to give it my best shot.

"To make a baby, you need sperm and an egg and a place to grow it, like the uterus. A baby doesn't need a mommy and a daddy. A baby doesn't always have a mommy and a daddy. But what a baby does need is love, unconditional love, and support."

I watched his face to see how that answer sat with him. He seemed to think it over for a really long time and then a little smile curled up the corner of his mouth.

"I'm really glad that you're my mommy," he said, throwing his arms around me and giving me a big hug. I breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis averted and without too much scarring, I hoped. "So do you have to eat the egg and sperm to get the baby into the uta … uterus?"

Then again, maybe not.

Pamela Valentine Pamela Valentine writes and works from home, on the far FAR south side of Chicago, as Affirmed Mom for ChicagoNow.

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