Talking about pregnancy and birth

A pregnancy in the family – or when an important person in your child’s life like their teacher is pregnant – can be a time when there are many questions and opportunities for talking and learning together. In the section of The Chat called Questions Children and Young People Ask you will find some suggestions as to how to answer these questions:

In this Talking About topic, we go beyond those initial answers to these questions, to think about the conversations we can have that help our child understand more about the importance of pregnancy for mother and child, and about how a baby is born. There are other topics for 9-10-year-oldsthat you might be interested in: Talking about how human life begins and Talking about how people have sex.


Talking about pregnancy and being born

When you talk about pregnancy you can share the main points as follows. We have provided some pictures here to go with the words you can use.You can go back to the pictures and text again and tell the story of pregnancy and being born. As always, there are book suggestions later.


Books

You might like to read these books together. Your library might have them, or you can ask them if they will order a book for you.

Human Body Learning Lab: Take an Inside Tour of How Your Anatomy Works 

Betty Choi
ISBN 1635864798

An exploration of the inner workings of all the major systems of the human body, with hands-on learning lab experiments, colourful diagrams and infographics, model building, and challenging games.

It’s Not the Stork!: A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends 

Robbie Harris
ISBN 9780763633318

Helps answer questions children ask about how they began.