I made a video of me talking to V about her—and her siblings’—conception + birth story. For the first time, I sat down with a pen and paper to illustrate the story.
Looking for how I talked to her when she was younger? Check out our conversation at 6 months and two years old.
It started when she was talking about her birthday and was trying to understand how she her age changes every year. She was adding a day to her birth date, so I was explaining her that although the year and her age will change every year, her actual birth date won’t. (Gotta love kid logic!) So I drew an image of her, based on her haircut/hair length at each year. She’s a pretty visual kid who loves drawing, so she understood. Then, because last year’s pic included her twin brother and sister, she started drawing dot babies (embryos) in Mama’s belly. So I whipped out a pen and notepad and created this, um, rather drawn out* version of her conception story.
You’ll see that I use anatomically correct terms for various body parts, while keeping the conversation lighthearted and age-appropriate. (And normally we refer to our donor by her name, but I haven’t in this video to protect her privacy.)
I must thank my mentors, Marna Gatlin and Carole LieberWilkins, for my ease in talking to my kids and others about how my family came to be. It was an honour to collaborate with them on their forthcoming book, Let’s Talk About Egg Donation, which will be published in the next month!
*Groan! (Pardon the pun…)
[…] be future conversations that will continue to evolve. (See here for past conversations at 5, at 4, at 2, and at 6 […]