“Daddy, Where Do Babies Come From?”

My eldest son, Jack, 3-and-a-half, has been exploring the concepts of pregnancy and parenthood, acting out a series of scenarios with the aid of toys and teddies.

A few weeks ago he was carrying around the head of a Cyberman – a big, bulky, wearable, adult-sized head – introducing it as his baby, asking us to kiss it goodnight, even strapping it into his little brother’s buggy and shooshing us incase we woke it up. Adorable, yet also pretty surreal.

He then became attached to a rather more cuddly and anthropomorphic baby-substitute, an orange, squish-faced mini Tellytubby his little brother Christopher got for Christmas. He named him Shah. Cheers for the potential fatwa, son. At least you never named him… nevermind.

Sometimes Jack carried Shah around, cuddling him, cradling, passing him to us for short bursts of time before jealously grabbing him back again, like he was the proud and overzealous parent of a newborn. Sometimes he stuffed Shah up his jumper, and pretended to be an expectant parent. Last week he told us that the baby would come out of his tummy in ten weeks’ time, before plucking it out of this jumper seconds later with the ease of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, which we all felt was rather a slap in the face for those poor women forced to spend endless, agonising hours sweating and screaming in the delivery room, and then have to get their fannies and arses stitched back together.

I think we should have made this a teachable moment, and let him watch a particularly gruesome live birth on YouTube – right after we’d schooled the ignoramus on Iranian history and politics, of course.

In any case, a teachable moment presented itself a few days later. I had just finished reading him his bed-time stories, when he grabbed his bed-time teddy bear (Shah had been deposed at this point) and pushed it up his pyjama top.

“Dad did WHAT to you?”

“I’ve got a baby in my tummy again, Daddy.”

I smiled. “It’s good to pretend like this. It helps you learn things, and find out how things feel, and find out how other people feel about things.”

That being said, I made it clear that in the real world the only guys capable of giving birth are seahorses and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I went on to give him a bit more info.

“And mummies don’t carry the babies inside their actual tummy, where the food goes. There’s a special part that’s just for growing babies.”

Jack nodded vigorously. “And then they poo the babies out.”

“Not….” I began, talking more slowly and carefully as I began to realise where the conversation was almost certainly heading, “…really. They don’t… mummies don’t… poo babies out of their bum.”

I turned to look at his face. It was deathly still, though a little furrow was forming on his brow. I knew it was coming.

“So where do the babies come from, Daddy?”

Code red! Code red!

This was a pivotal moment. I knew that whatever I said next could have a profound effect on Jack’s personal and psycho-sexual development. Euphemism or truth-emism?

Do I tell him that babies come from the magical kingdom of Fluffington? That they’re emailed from heaven and printed on a 3D printer embedded in mummy’s crotch?

Or do I throw him a truth-bomb, break out charts and diagrams, and make him do join-the-dots pictures of vulvas and uteruses? Show him photos of big gaping fannies in such glaring, high-density close-up that it’s like staring into the jaws of the Predator? Do I talk him through what was happening that time he walked into the kitchen and found his mum bent over the counter in her dressing gown, and I told him she had a sore back and I was just massaging it better?

Ultimately, much like when Jack himself was conceived, I decided to have a quick, no-frills stab at it.

“Well, you know how we boys have willies? Me, you, baby Chris, all men.”

“Grandpa too, he has a willy.”

“That’s right, grandpa, too.”

“And papa. And uncle Aiden. They have willies.”

“That’s right.”

“And my other papa.”

“Yep.”

“And…”

I cut it short, so we didnt’t have to spend the whole night listing the names of anyone who’d ever possessed a penis.

“This is some hard shit to hear. Spark me one up, pops.”

“Well, ladies don’t have that.”

“What do they have?”

Good question. They have… they have a…

“Well, they have a… a vvvvvv…. a vvvvva….vvvva….vv…vvvvvaa….”

Why was this word so hard to say? I couldn’t seem to get my tongue around it (‘Stop your snickering up the back of the class there!’). I was beginning to sound like a man with a faulty chainsaw.

“Vagina!” I said with sudden force. “It’s called a vagina.”

“Fajina?”

“Vagina.”

“Vagina….” And then, inevitably, he said: “Vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina.”

At that moment, as if summoned by the magic of the word itself, a voice boomed from the hallway outside: “He’ll be running around his nursery shouting that all day tomorrow now!”

“There’s nothing wrong with vaginas!” I shouted back at his mum, conscious that the word vagina was beginning to lose all meaning through repetition.  I turned back to Jack. “See, it’s called a vagina, but it’s sort of …a hole, that ladies have. Boys have willies, girls have holes. That’s how the baby gets out.”

He nodded, seemingly satisfied. I quickly changed the subject before the questions became any more technical…

A few days ago I came home from work to find Jack holding Shah again.

“Hi Shah,” I said.

“It’s not Shah. It’s Lou-lou.”

“Oh. What happened to Shah?”

Jack shrugged. “He died in a fire.”

I dare say it won’t be long before we’re having the death talk.

Vaginas have got a lot to answer for.