I used to believe that babies were put on backorder for 9 months and when they arrived, the hospital would give you a call and you could go pick it up. I just thought the big belly part was because you ate too much because you were really excited about getting a new baby.

Gypsy

I grew up on a farm, so I was familiar with crop farming and gardening from an early age, but had absolutely no concept of sexual reproduction until much later. As a result, when I was 5 or 6 and overheard my Mother explaining to my older sister how "the man's penis fertilizes the seed," I remember picturing a penis wearing a hat and deligently using farming tools. My sister immediately chased me away when she saw that I was intruding on their "private" conversation, so I missed hearing the rest of the lecture and was left with that absurd image in my head for years.

Anon

Once when I 8 0r 9, I heard the word "vasectomy" on TV. I asked my mom what it meant. She told me: "It's an operation that a man gets so he can't have babies." I took this to mean that I needed surgery or I could become pregnant like a woman. I was pretty freaked out, and hoped that my doctor would give me a vasectomy whenever I went in for a checkup. He never did.

B. Bell

I used to believe that a man had as many testicles as he had children. So I thought the Catholic guy next door had nine balls and that I'd only have two kids when I grew up.

Skwidy

When I was, like, 4 years old I was informed of the 'baby factory'. When ever I misbehaved, my sister, mother, aunt, etc, would threaten me with 'your going to go back to the baby factory!' So one day in a car ride I was being a little brat. Once again 'your going back to the baby factory!' came out. I said 'there is no such thing as the baby factory!' I thought i had out wit them. Turns out on the next block there was a neon sign that had 'Baby Factory' on the side. I was the best behaved child for the next 4 months or so.

mickthethief

My brother told me the bare fact about reproduction (penetration) and it sounded so complicated that I figured the man and woman had to go to a doctor to get the thing done. They would stand facing each other and then the doctor would carefully guide the man's penis into the woman. There would be a very professional medical quality to all of this and great embarrassment for the man and woman...but it was the only way.

Artamnesia

My parents told me that a man and a woman had to do "something special" to make a baby. However, she didn't specify what this "something special" was, nor did I quite understand about pregnancy (I was very little). I'd also been told that babies came "from God" if you prayed for one, so I put the two together, and decided there must be some sort of special baby-creating prayer/ritual. I had vague mental images of my parents lighting candles and chanting until a baby spontaneously appeared in the room.

Anon

I used to believe that when the egg was fertilized, it would become a baby in about a second, pop out of the mom's stomach, and fly around the room like a balloon. I have no idea where that last part comes from.

Daniel

When my daughter, LIzzy, was almost two, I sat my four year old son down to tell him that we were thinking of having another baby. He burst out crying. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I want to keep Lizzy."

Mark (Vermont)

When we were little, my mother had bought us a book titled, "How You Were Born". In this book, there was an illustration of a sperm under a magnifying glass. For years, I thought the magnifying glass was a frying pan and was totally mystified by where and how the frying pan fit into the reproductive process.

Amanda McMurray

To make a baby a man and woman touched parts of the body and that would make that part of the baby. So if they held hands that would make the baby's hands. If they kissed that would make the baby's lips. They had to rub butts in order to make the baby's butt. There was no doubling up. It wasn't like if they touched hands multiple times the baby would be some octopus monstroid. The parts would float around in the mommy's tummy until it was completed. The parts were good for up to 9 months. So you had to complete the baby in 9 months or you had some parts over.

Green Fool

Whenever we pester our mom about where we came from she would tell us either (a) she found us by a garbage can or (b) her favourite - we exploded from rocks.
Thanks, mom! At least it's more interesting than the stork story.

4-Strings

My friend's sister was born when she was 5. Her Dad told she is 7lb. My friend was crying as she thought she had to pay £7 for seeing her and she didn't have that money

Helen

I used to believe that if you had sex underwater you would give brith to a mermaid.

Anon

I had always known about sex; I was never told that old one about the stork. However, I didn't learn the specifics until I was twelve. I came up with a truly brilliant theory, though. Men and women had magnetic force-fields around them, men were north magnets and women were south magnets. Babies were conceives when men and women got so close together that the magnetic fields touched, and had to spen a whole night like that. As you can tell, I spent much thought on the subject, and was convinced that if I held two ordinary metal magnets together for a whole night, more metal would appear in nine months.

Sara

I thought that a woman could never have sex during her pregnancy. I was completely ready to wait the whole time when our first was conceived. I think my wife wishes now that she had let me believe it.

A Little Confused

When I was in 4th grade, I got to stay overnight at a classmate's house. Her big sister--who was in 6th grade and therefore a font of information--told us about where babies come from.

She said that the man and woman take off all their clothes, get into a bathtub together "and the woman rubs the man's 'thing' until it foams and foams. It fills the bathtub with foam and then they take the foam and rub it all over the woman's skin. And she becomes pregnant."

I actually believed this for a few years.

naive Washingtonian

when i was about eight or nine, my father sat me down and told me the facts of life. he explained how sperm, from his penis, would fertilise the woman's egg by passing through her vagina into her reproductive system ...

on saturday mornings i used to climb in bed with my parents; they were wearing pyjamas, thankfully, but i used to climb under the bedclothes to see if i could see any sperms, crawling and moving like trail of ants, from one side of the bed to the other ...

Anon

Not wanting to discuss reproduction with me, my mother told me I was adopted from a band of gypsies. I believed her until I was 12 years old and she broke the news. I was kind of sad. I mean, come on, how many people do you know that are adopted by gypsies?

PeanutLuLu

I understood quite well how babies were made, with the sperm coming out of the man's penis and fertilizing the "little seed" inside the woman. What I could not understand, though, was how the sperm could go through the man's pyjamas. I think I wondered about this until I was at least 12 years old. Nobody ever slept naked in our house, so it never occured to me that you could take off your pyjamas.

Daniele