reproduction

I used to believe that a man only had six sperms (I somehow got confused when my mom was telling me the facts of life) and I couldn't quite figure out how come my aunt and uncle had seven kids.

Betty

When I was about 6-7 I asked my mum how I was made. She told me that she planted an apple pip in her belly button and waited for the tree to grow. For the nine month she had to lie flat on her back so the tree could grow. Once it produced fruit (babies) she had to choose the best one from the tree (me!). Apparently I used to squeak alot so she nicknamed me squeaky pip from her pip tree. Years later she had my sister and made my sister beleive that when she was inside my mums stomach she could see the world through her belly button.... just wierd.

Becki M UK

i thought - when i was pregnant - i could dye my hair blond, and my baby wouldn´t be brunette as i am.

judi (peru)

When I was 16 and my stepmother was 34, we were talking about a man who was proud of having eight sons. She said, "That's nothing to be proud of -- it just depends on which testicle the sperm came out of." She thought the girl sperm came from one and the boy sperm from the other. I was stunned.

Bee

I believed (thanks to my mum) that babies grew on "baby trees" and simply 'fell off' when they were ripe!!!

Stace

For a short while, when I was about 6 or 7, my friends and I thought that all girls were born pregnant. Then,when we got married, the baby would be born. We would push our bikes around instead of riding in case we might hurt the fetus.

Boo

When I was 3 I popped the big question to my dad: "Where do babies come from?". My dad, being a somewhat embarrassed scientist, and not feeling quite up to explaining sex to me, instead decided to give me a very detailed and quite accurate description of artificial insemination, starting with the man "peeing" in a petri dish, and all the way to implantation of the embryo.

I thought this was rather involved, but believed it for years.

Scientist

That to make a baby a man (over 21 & under 25) had to kiss a woman (over 19 & under 21).

Johny

When I was very young I used to think 'human beings' were 'human beans'. (This goes back long before I could read so I was judging by the sound of what people were saying.) So this meant I thought that people grew from the ground like a runner bean.

Anon

I used to think that when a mommy and daddy had made a baby, when they kissed, the daddy put an egg in the mommys mouth, and she swallowed it, and thats how it got in her tummy. Then she pooped it out and THERE was the baby!

Emma

I was the last child my parents wanted, so when I was about 3 years old, my dad got "fixed." Because of that, he couldn't pick me up for a while. To explain why he couldn't pick me up, my parents told me he got a shot so they wouldn't have any more babies. I am now 20, and just the other day I was talking to my mom about my fiance getting the "shot" after we had 2 kids. She then laughed hysterically and explained that there was more to it than that.

Anon

In junior school we were given small envelopes to donate money, on each envelope there was a printed photograph of a baby.

Around the same time I learnt that babies were made with 'seeds' and I imagined that when I was older I would have to go and choose a packet from a market stall in town!

Anon

My grandparents and mother used to tell me that each and every baby was born a girl. However, if you wanted a son, you would have to take the baby to K-Mart and buy the proper parts and attach it to him. I didn't think there could possibly be another reason why there were different sexes and believed it for quite a few years.

Becca

I thought that when a woman got cravings when she was pregnant, then whatever she craved would become her offspring's favourite foods.

Conversely, I thought that if a woman was put off a specific food while pregnant, then that'd become the food the child didn't like.

I only realised this was not true when Mum told me she didn't like tomatoes while pregnant, even though I like tomatoes.

Anon

In 5th grade, we had a test on sex education. We were given a pretest. A multiple choice question asked where is the baby kept in the mother (someting like that). I picked stomach. I failed the test.

Anon

When I was about 5 and asked where babies came from my mother said they came from seeds that the father gave the mother. So for many years I thought there must be a shop where you bought these magic seeds.

David

When I was 4 or 5 years old, I believed that babies were made by taking the "fluff" out of milkweed pods, soaking them in a puddle, and then eating them. That was how the baby got inside you! Yeah, my older brother told me this ( to be a wiseguy ) but I totally believed him. I found out the truth a couple years later!

J.Farris

My wife couldn't figure out why no one was happy when her dad went to the hospital. Every time her mother went she brought home a new sister. My wife thought she was going to get a new brother.

Len

When I was about four or five years old my next-door neighbor accidentally slammed my finger in her door. She felt soooooo horribly about it and kept apologising to me over and over.

Not long after the incident, she had an adorable baby girl. I thought that her having the baby happened because she had slammed my finger into her door, and that was her ultimate apology.

To this day, a small part of me still believes that.

Jemmie-Bean

i used to believe as a kid that everyone had a baby growing inside them, and when you had a stomach ache (or your stomach 'growled') that that was the baby kicking :)

steph