Mom, where do babies come from?

I feel as if every kid has a bit of confusion about where babies come from. I am not special in that regard. Some of my friends went to school and learned things in health class. Some kids don't even think about it. Some kids have their parents make things up, such as the stork thing. My path to finding out how the whole process works would probably have been much easier if I had just asked, or read a book, but I have a bad habit of getting one piece of data, and then extrapolating the rest for myself. As you can guess, this went poorly for me.
Every parent screws up their kids. It's going to happen. It's not even their fault. I doubt my parents even remember telling me the most of these things, and were most likely just trying to get me to be quiet, but in my little child mind, I was not going to dismiss any of their very important answers to my questions.

3 year old me: "Why do people kiss at their wedding?"
My father: "Because when you kiss on the lips, that means you are married."
Me: "What about in movies?"
My father: "They put covers on their lips so they aren't really married."
That was enough to satisfy me for a while.

3 year old me: "How does the baby get out of the mommy's belly?"
My mother: "From the bigger hole, under the one where you pee."
I needed no further answers, I knew where that was. This did however cause years of anxiety for me. I was pretty much born to be a mom. All I've ever wanted from the time I can remember was that I wanted a baby. I had so many dolls and I would treat them like my children. I got them up and dressed each day, and put them to bed each night. I would also get up in the middle of the night to feed them because I heard that's what moms have to do. I was prepared. But there was a problem...I had a doll that was the actual size of a newborn. That thing had a big head! I knew there was no way that a head that size would fit out of where my mother had told me it came from! Terrified that my future baby would be trapped in my belly, I spent hours trying to "stretch" enough so that I could have a baby. My mother, as all mothers do, learned quickly that if your child is quiet, you should probably see what they are doing. I was discovered and told to stop that.
Me: "But I want to be able to have a baby!!!"
My mother: "You will. It will get bigger when you are ready to have a baby."
Oddly enough, that was enough to make me happy with life again and I stopped my toddler-self-mutilating process.

I had also overheard many conversations about "babies having babies", and in church we learned about Sarah having a baby after she was 90, so I had no real concept of what "childbearing age" was.
We used to hang out with this other family a bunch when I was small. We met when I was 5, and Sarah was 6. We both wanted to be midwives. Every time we were together we played that we were both pregnant and then would deliver each other's babies. We also had fake husbands, because you can't get pregnant if you aren't married!

When I was 5, we went to visit my mom's friend who had a 6 year old son, Jeremy. I had a HUGE crush on Jeremy. I have a strange fascination with all things Disney, and Jeremy looked just like Christopher Robin. To my 5 year old self, he was as attractive as a Rob Lowe look alike is to me today. Swoon. I was a bold kid, and I went after the things I wanted. I would kiss Jeremy on his forehead and his chin all the time. One day he said he thought I was pretty, and said that if I kissed his face one more time, he was going to kiss me on my lips. My little 5 year old mind was so torn! I wanted Jeremy to kiss me, but I had a problem...if we kiss on the lips, that means we are married...if we are married, I will get pregnant...I couldn't become pregnant because that hole hadn't grown yet so I wouldn't be able to get a baby out! I had to tell Jeremy that he shouldn't kiss me and I was sad about that for months. 

When I was 7 I found out that you don't have to be married to have a baby. 

Me: "If you aren't married, how do you know who the dad is?"

My mother: "It's the boy that spends the most time with you."

This caused some trouble. Sarah had a little brother, Jonathan. We also hung out with another family who had 2 sons, Francis and Kyle. Francis was the oldest and more responsible one, so I made sure to spend the most time with him, and not let Jonathan play with us if he was approaching an equal play time as Francis, because if I was going to have a baby, I wanted it to be with someone responsible. 

When I was 8, I learned from TV that you got pregnant from "sleeping with a guy". From then on out I was terrified to have a sleepover at my grandma's house if I knew my cousin, Steven was going to be there. One time he and I were watching a movie and we fell asleep. I was convinced that I was pregnant. I never got fat, so eventually I stopped worrying. 

When I was 10, my aunt and uncle were trying to have a baby. 

Me: "If you are already married, how do you try to have a baby?"

My mother: "You pray."

So I told my aunt that I was very excited about a new cousin, and not to worry, I would be helping them try! She was very confused. 

I knew that my other cousin, Lauren, and I had both been due to be born on 12/31/87. Neither of us were born that day, but if we had the same due date, our mothers must have become pregnant on the same day. Obviously they had attended some sort of prayer meeting in March of '87. 

I also hid all the aspirin in my aunt's house because my grandmother had said that my aunt wouldn't get pregnant if she would just squeeze an aspirin between her knees. 

One day when I was about 10 or 11, I had the courage to ask my mom about something I had yet to figure out. I had learned from TV that sex was something that went on when the guy stopped being annoying enough that the woman let him roll around naked with her for a while instead of attending to her very strict hand cream application regimen. I still did not relate sex to babies. I was nervous to ask my mother about this because I didn't want to make her feel bad. This whole sex thing seemed to be something that made grown-ups happy, and my father could be pretty annoying, so I figured this was not something that ever took place. If I had an embarrassing question, I would ask it when my mother was in a hurry. 

Me: "Hey, mom?...did you ever have sex?"

My mother: "Yes. How do you think you got here? Get dressed."

Mind. Blown. 

I had one friend, Liz, who I have known since we were 5. Liz went to school. She would know about this stuff. We discussed our newfound knowledge of how sex leads to babies. She went to catholic school, so neither of us had a good grasp on what exactly sex was, but we thought it was gross. After a while though we decided that eventually we would have to get naked with a boy if we ever wanted to have babies. This was terrifying and horribly disappointing. We had seen one naked boy in our lives, her younger brother, when he was 3 and we were 5, and I made him prove that he had taken off his bathing suit (you weren't allowed to get on the swings in a wet suit, you could slip off!). Whatever that thing was that boys have, it was weird and we weren't sure what to do with it, nor did we want one of those anywhere near us. 

When I was 12, I became very curious about how this whole baby thing actually worked. I found some medical books in the house and started reading. Finally! I had the whole process of how the sperm meets the egg, gets smushed together, grows a bunch of cells, lovely! I thought I had it down. Sleep naked in the same bed, kiss a little, somehow the sperm hikes it's way over and up into the lady and BOOM! Baby! 

It wasn't until I was 16 and started kind of seeing this guy, Brandon, who volunteered with me at the hospital that I actually found out the whole deal. All the guys thought it was weird how innocent and naive I was. Brandon was nice about it and never made me feel bad or embarrassed. He brought in one of his school books one day and explained everything to me. I was a little shocked when I learned that you have to put...that...there! 

We never did get to apply his lesson to real life, but I was very thankful to him for clearing up a lifetime of confusion that I had created for myself! 

Finally I could hang out with a boy without keeping track of how much time I spent with each one, I could kiss a boy on the lips, sleep over at my cousin's house, and use aspirin for headaches!