Lost in Translation

Ian and Sophie

Ages ago we told Ian the story of his birth and have repeated it many times.  Recently, however, it has come to our attention that something got a little lost in translation.  Ian was born, for anyone who does not know, via emergency C-section.  Our first clue that we had explained this procedure poorly came recently when he asked if they had cut mommy’s neck to get him out.  Of course I explained that babies grow in their mother’s bellies, and showed him my scar so he’d understand that no, he did not come out of Mommy’s neck.  He seemed to understand and accept this information quite well.

That is, until we showed him the pictures of Spazzface 2.0 and we started talking about The Baby in Mommy’s Belly.  His first question was, “Is it MY baby, Mommy?”  He was promptly told that, “yes, sweetie, it’s your baby, Mommy’s baby, and Daddy’s baby.  This is OUR baby and it will live here with us. ” (So far this has, thankfully, put paid to his efforts to convince us to adopt our friend’s infants.)

Predictably, his next question was, “Can they get it out of yours belly, Mommy?”  And, naturally, we explained that yes, we will get the baby out when the baby is ready, but it’s still very tiny and we’ll have to wait a LONG TIME before that happens.  “And then they will cut off yours head and get my baby out, Mommy.  Let’s get my baby out of there!”

I, to be perfectly honest, was laughing too hard to talk, but Daddy, for some reason, took a dim view of this talk of cutting off my head.  Michael immediately and emphatically replied, “NO! We are NEVER cutting off your mother’s head.  NEVER.”  So that’s settled.  (Also, we’ve told Ian he MAY NOT watch them get the baby out of Mommy’s tummy.)

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