Well, I finally did it. I explained to Rachel how babies are made. And it was fine - a lot of sweat over nothng.

When she asked me to explain it to her, I fully intended to do it within a day or two.

This was about five months ago. We were in the car. I was driving. Hannah was there. The timing wasn’t quite right.

Perhaps explaining sex for the first time is a little like having sex for the first time. You want the atmosphere to be just so, but it rarely is.

That night I searched amazon.com and spent hours trying to choose the best book to help break the ice. I found this one, written for 4-7 year olds.

It arrived.

Then I waited for her to ask again. She didn’t. I was in the third trimester of my pregnancy and tired to the bone (maybe because I was growing Hercules in my uterus). I didn’t raise the issue. Hannah found the books and the girls looked through the books together, but Rachel lost interest before getting past the first few pages She didn’t quite get that the answer to her question was in the book somewhere.

Relieved, I put the book away and kind of forgot about it…

…until last week when she was looking for books that we could read together and she found the book. She asked to read it. I took a deep breath and put my best game face on, kind of like the time I taught a classroom of 130 college students and had to convince myself I wasn’t terrified every single time I walked into the classroom.

So I had this big happy look on my face, like this was the funnest thing we’ve done in a long time and underneath I was sweating and my heart and mind were racing. It was kind of like reading that book “There is a Monster At The End of the Book.” You know the one I’m talking about…where Grover begs you not to turn the page because there is a monster at the end of the book and it turns out to be him?

So we’re looking at these cartoon drawings of bodies, which are really quite cute. We first learn the parts of the outside of the body. And we laugh a little bit, cause it was sort of silly. Then we looked at the parts in the inside of the body, the uterus, the fallopian tubes, etc. Then we learned about the good old eggs and the sperm. The egg had big red lipstick lips on it. Pretty cute. Things were getting interesting. I might have learned a few things along the way myself.

Then we get to the monster at the end of the book, except it was okay. A man and a woman are under the covers and smiling and hugging and there are hearts surrounding them. The book explained matters perfectly, without giving more information than Rachel needed. She looked at me wide-eyed and laughed, and I laughed, too. And she asked more seriously, “Did you and Dad do that.” And I told her yes and that it all seems sort of silly when you’re young.

And that was pretty much it. We finished the book. She was still seven. She hadn’t lost her innocence. And it was really sort of fun. She didn’t ask more questions, I think because she had plenty to absorb.

And I felt good, Partly because it really was an honor to have been the first one to tell her. I never had a discussion about how babies are made with my parents. Instead, I heard it from friends and in the classroom. It was fine, but I’m glad that Rachel got to hear it from me first at an age when the idea of talking about it didn’t horrify and embarrass her. When bigger questions about sex come up, maybe it won’t be so hard to talk more.

I also felt good because so much of parenting these days is about being cautious - about what to avoid. We buckle our kids in car seats and worry about trans fats and child molesters and open electrical sockets. This was about being brave, about diving into the lake even though the water looked damn freezing. And I did it. And it felt good to be brave.

Note to self: I must be brave more often.