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Teacher returns from maternity leave to field hilariously sweet questions from her class

Who better to ask where babies come from than a second grade teacher?

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Curious second graders ask questions about pregnancy.

Whoa, baby! Fielding questions about where babies come from can be a full-time job, especially when you’ve got a classroom full of curious kids. Most times, this big question is left to the parents, who sometimes give elaborate answers that they invariably need to correct when the child is older. I’ve heard parents tell kids that babies come from watermelon seeds that get accidentally swallowed or that a stork drops babies off on doorsteps (I’ve yet to hear where the stork gets this unsuspecting child). People can spin some tall tales in an effort to avoid answering the question of where babies come from and how they get out.

In 2022, A K-5 science teacher in North Carolina decided she was going to answer questions from her curious second grade class with age-appropriate truthful answers. Nancy Bullard was preparing for maternity leave with her first child and realized she would need to inform her class that she would be out for a few months so they wouldn’t be concerned.

Bullard told Today Parents, "I didn’t want them to get caught off guard when I stopped coming to school. Plus, I wanted to reassure them that my leave was temporary." Bullard has a rotating group of students that come through her science lab weekly and she decided to turn her expected absence into a lesson she titled “Baby Bonanza.” During the lesson, the kids were able to draw the baby and guess his birthday, weight and time of birth.

Bullard also said the students gave her very cute parenting advice and tips on how to be a good mom. Some of this included singing the baby a song to throwing a piece of cheese on its face. The cheese was inspired by a TikTok video, the child admitted, but other gems included feeding and changing the baby, while one child suggested running away if the baby started crying.

When Mrs. B. returned to work after welcoming her first child, Sam, a baby boy, the kids were ready to learn more, and Mrs. B did not disappoint. Bullard told Today Parents, "I wanted to take a few minutes to catch up with students, introduce them to my son, and let them ask questions. When I wrote my lesson plan for this day I planned to spend about five minutes answering questions, but ended up spending nearly 20 minutes doing so."

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The students were filled with curiosity when their teacher returned. One asked “Is it difficult to have a baby?” to which Mrs. B. responded, “Yeah, yeah it is. It’s pretty tough.” Another student asked if the baby slept with his mom and dad, while another wanted to know the big question. You know: Where do babies come from? Without missing a beat, Bullard answered like the science teacher she is, with “They come from an organ called your uterus,” while pointing to her lower belly.

Bullard explained to Today that she taught a lesson earlier in the year about organs and organ function to her kids in K-5. “Regardless of age, all my students understand the basic concept of pregnancy: There was a baby inside me, now that baby is out, and I spent maternity leave taking care of him … Students were interested, curious, and excited to get their questions answered," the new mom said. "As a science teacher, I welcome curiosity and always strive to answer questions factually."

The elementary science teacher shared the video on TikTok and Instagram, “Mrs. B TV,” where the video has racked up more than 7 million views across the two platforms.

May all children be so lucky as to have a Mrs. B. at some point in their school career.


This article originally appeared on 4.5.22

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New Zealand is giving bereavement leave from work to women who have miscarriages

via Pexels

A miscarriage can be an incredibly traumatizing event for a woman, but because they are relatively common, they aren't treated as seriously as they should be. According to the CDC, about 17% of American pregnancies end in miscarriage.

"Because it is medically common, the impact of miscarriage is often underestimated," Janet Jaffe, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Reproductive Psychology in San Diego said according to the American Psychological Association.

"But miscarriage is a traumatic loss, not only of the pregnancy but of a woman's sense of self and her hopes and dreams of the future. She has lost her 'reproductive story,' and it needs to be grieved," she continued.

A study from Britain found that about 15% of women who miscarry experience significant depression and/or anxiety for up to three years after the event.

However, the experience is treated by most as a routine health issue, forgetting the incredible emotional trauma that can come with a miscarriage. The loss of a potential child strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human. To simply pass it off as a routine medical event is extremely callous.

A new law recently passed in New Zealand aims to provide time to heal for those intimately affected by miscarriage.

New Zealand's parliament passed a new bill that gives women, their partners, and parents planning to have a child through adoption or surrogacy, three days of paid leave after a pregnancy loss. India is the only other country with such a law. It gives women six weeks of paid leave after a miscarriage or medical termination.

In the U.S., Reddit is the only employer that offers time off for a miscarriage. The tech company offers eight and a half weeks of fully paid leave for anyone who goes through a pregnancy loss — father or mother.

"The passing of this bill shows that once again New Zealand is leading the way for progressive and compassionate legislation, becoming only the second country in the world to provide leave for miscarriage and stillbirth," Ginny Andersen, the MP in charge of the bill, said in a statement.

"The bill will give women and their partners time to come to terms with their loss without having to tap into sick leave. Because their grief is not a sickness, it is a loss. And loss takes time."

During a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Andersen explained that miscarriages are a taboo subject in New Zealand and shouldn't be the reason for conflict between employee and employer.

"The lack of clarity has meant some women have been in the position of having to argue with their employer about whether they are entitled to leave because they have lost their unborn child," Andersen said. "A lot of women have had more than one miscarriage and it can be very traumatic and difficult if you are trying to hold down a job."

Let's hope that New Zealand's new law calls much-needed attention to the grief that parents experience after a miscarriage and inspires world leaders will take necessary steps to create an environment where parents can heal after such personal trauma.

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3 moms recorded their first weeks home with a newborn. It got real — real quick.

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I didn't understand why people talked about the newborn period being so hard.

I mean, it's not like newborn babies are crawling around getting into things or arguing with you about which color cup they want. They eat, they sleep, and they poop. How hard could it be?

Then I had my first baby — and the world turned upside down.

Photo by Philippe Huguen/Getty Images.

Having a newborn is so much more than just snuggling with your sweet-smelling infant. There's the childbirth recovery, the hormone surges, the engorged breasts leaking all over the place, the crying (yours and the baby's), and the sleep deprivation — OMG, the sleep deprivation. It's used as a form of torture for a reason.

There's also the weighty realization that this tiny person's life is literally in your hands, and you have no real idea what you're doing. It's all-consuming.

Three moms recorded their first weeks home with their newborns — and nothing was held back.

Cortney, Melissa, and Dorian all had babies this year. Melissa had her second child (she also had a toddler at the time), and Cortney and Dorian were first-time moms. They each used home security cameras to candidly document the first few postpartum weeks and shared a bit about what life has been like with a newborn.

One mom slowly eased her just-gave-birth body onto the couch and said, "Aw, f*ck." Yep. I remember that feeling. And the sound of those newborn cries is enough to make any mom's gut clench with feeling.

Of course, there is an indescribable beauty and magic to newborn babies. If someone could figure out how to bottle that baby-head smell, they'd be billionaires. There's nothing softer or silkier than baby skin, and sometimes all you want to do is just sit and stare at their perfect faces.

But that's only a fraction of the story in those early weeks.

These moms shared what surprised them about having a newborn, and it's a powerful reminder of how hard it really can be.

"Having a newborn is not what I expected," Cortney tells me. "I knew it would be tiring, but I didn't realize how exhausted I would be. It's literally a 24/7 job with no breaks."

Dorian reiterates how exhausting that period can be. "The main thing that surprised me was how serious exhaustion could be," she says. "Especially in the first two weeks. It felt like sheer willpower to put one foot in front of the other and keep going because I was so tired."

[rebelmouse-image 19398111 dam="1" original_size="465x264" caption="Image via Canary/YouTube." expand=1]Image via Canary/YouTube.

Sleep deprivation is no joke, I'm telling you. And when you add "recovering from childbirth" to the mix, it's a miracle new moms function at all.

"I wish people understood how difficult it is," Melissa says. "Being pregnant, giving birth, and the aftermath is a lot. Not only do you have to figure out how to meet the needs of a baby, but you feel worn out."

New moms need support, and that starts with acknowledging how hard they're working and how valuable that work is.

Did you know that the U.S. is the only developed nation that doesn't guarantee paid maternity leave for new moms? The only one. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Meanwhile, 36 nations offer at least a year of paid leave for parents, and dozens more offer, at minimum, 14 weeks.

If we want our citizenry to be healthy and productive, we need to acknowledge that new mothers need time to recover from childbirth, tend to the needs of their babies, and adjust to a huge life change. New motherhood is hard — awesome and amazing, but hard. Let's all do what we can to support new moms as they adjust to their unexpectedly upside-down worlds.

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Larissa Waters' viral breastfeeding photo has an important message about motherhood.

This working mom's fight for a better world gets a boost from her new baby.

Think politics is filled with nothing but whining babies? Just wait until you see what's happening in Australia.

Queensland Sen. Larissa Waters just became the first woman to breastfeed on the floor of Australia's parliament. Thanks to a 2016 rule that gave the all-clear for moms to breast- and bottle-feed on the job, Waters made a bit of history when she brought 10-week-old Alia Joy to work this week.

She marked the occasion with a celebratory tweet.

The whole thing might seem kind of silly, but there's actually a really important message here.

"If we want more young women in Parliament, we must make the rules more family friendly to allow new mothers and new fathers to balance their parliamentary and parental duties," Waters said in November.

Worldwide, Waters isn't alone. She joins Icelandic member of parliament Unnur Brá Konráðsdóttir, Spanish politician Carolina Bescansa, and Italian politician and former member of European parliament Licia Ronzulli as mothers in politics who've brought their babies to the job.

Normalizing the act of breastfeeding (really folks, it shouldn't be that big of a deal) by making accommodations for new parents' hectic schedules and fighting for paid parental leave are both part of the fight for the more equal and welcoming world Waters wants. Sadly, some countries don't have paid maternal or paternal leave (most notably the U.S.), and there's still an unfortunate stigma and disgust surrounding breastfeeding (especially in public) that needs to stop.

Waters longs for the day when a mother feeding her child in public or at work isn't news.

"We need family-friendly and flexible workplaces for all so this isn't news anymore," she tweeted ahead of an interview with Sky News.

Announcing Alia's birth in an International Women's Day Facebook post back in March, Waters offered up a sweet note to her new daughter along with a mission statement about her purpose in motherhood and in politics.

What a fitting day to announce the arrival of my second daughter, Alia Joy! She has a head of hair like an 80s pop star...

Posted by Larissa Waters on Tuesday, March 7, 2017

"She is even more inspiration for continuing our work to address gender inequality and stem dangerous climate change. (And yes, if she's hungry, she will be breastfed in the Senate chamber)," she wrote, later adding, "Our public health system is excellent and must be fought for and protected! To all the awesome mums out there juggling everything — you are the real superheroes."

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