The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Making a Baby by Rachel Greener

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Making a Baby by Rachel Greener This inclusive guide to how every family begins is an honest, cheerful tool for conversations between parents and their young ones. To make a baby you need one egg, one sperm, and one womb. But every family starts in its own special way. This book answers the "Where did I come from?" question no matter who the reader is and how their life began. From all different kinds of conception through pregnancy to the birth itself, this candid and cozy guide is just right for the first conversations that parents will have with their children about how babies are made.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks response here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in if you've seen the live version of this our we updated with Windows update this morning and it's blown out our cameras. No matter how many restarts we do, we can't get a fix. So if you're watching it live, I do have the beautiful Rachel

Greener. She is on the show to talk to us about her newest book that she has out and we'll be going through that. It's called Making a Baby 22, 2021. It just came out. You can order it wherever great, fine books are sold. So we'll be talking to her. Thanks for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, hit the bell notification so you get all the notifications of everything we're doing over there. And you can find out, you can see all the groups we do on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those great places. Also go to goodreads.com, 4chesschris Vosh. You can see everything we're reading and reviewing over there as well. Today, we'll be talking with, as I mentioned before, Rachel Greener. She is a

children's book editor from London who has edited fiction, nonfiction, and picture books about everything from the ancient Egyptians and ocean plastics to teenage detectives and zombie goldfish of all things. I hate the zombie goldfish. That's always the Wednesdays. She wrote this book because she thinks it's important that all children have a chance to see their family story reflected in a book about where babies come from. We all know where they do. Storks, of course. They deliver them at night, I think, in those little bags. I saw that on a cartoon once. So welcome to the show, Rachel. How are you? Yeah, I'm really well, thank you. It's been a balmy day here in London, which makes a

change because it's been pretty rainy this week. Yeah, your guys' fun part there is the whole, it's very cloudy a lot of times there in London. Yes, yeah. And not that we notice really, because we're all effectively still in some kind of lockdown, but yeah. There we go. Oh look, you're back. You've arrived. And I'm back. And clearly my green screen isn't fully over.

Gotta love updates. There you go. I think we may have resolved it. So give us a reason. What motivated you to want to write this book? I am actually also the publisher of the book in the UK. So when I was on maternity leave with my first son, I got called in to Nosy Crow, who are the independent British publisher that I work for, to interview for the role of head of

nonfiction. And as part of my interview, I was asked to come up with an idea for a children's nonfiction book on any subject that doesn't exist, but that is necessary. I had some time to prepare this before the interview. So I was casting around, what am I going to present? What is, what's not already been done? And as I was on maternity leave, obviously babies were on my mind. I knew lots of other people in lots of different circumstances who were trying to start families or wanted to start families, but were facing various barriers. And I thought, I'll read, I'll read the competition that's out there.

I'll read the books that were around when I was young and see how stuff's moved on. And it turned out that while there are some really great, super inclusive books out there, I didn't really find any book that actually got down to the biological truth of the matter. And, but, and was appropriate because there's a lot of books you can read that are

beautifully inclusive and you can read them and they're wonderful, but you could come out of it as a nine year old or a seven year inclusive and you can read them and they're wonderful, but you could come out of it as a nine-year-old or a seven-year-old and you still actually don't know really how it happens. And I also thought it was really important. Most of the books I read, not all, but most, they only ever referred to a mummy and a daddy. And I thought, what about all the other family stories out there? What about all the other children who aren't seeing the story of their adoption or the fact that their parents used a surrogate or needed to use a donor sperm or a donor egg where are their stories so i pitched the idea i got the job and about six months later my boss said when are we seeing this book so so i started working on it there you go and you don't wait you started

working on six months after so i started working on the book about go and you don't wait you started working on six months after so i started working on the book about six months after i started my job and i'm not an expert obviously i'm an i'm a publisher i'm an editor so i just wrote the book that i felt i would want to have seen when i was a kid and the kind of information that i would like to be available for my son who has read the book he's four he hasn't actually read it he can't read but I've read it too and because I'm not an expert we worked with one of the UK's leading LGBTQ plus charities we work with a midwife we work with a biology teacher we work with an academic expert who works on cell biology so we really tried to cover all bases to make sure that this was a

really scientifically accurate book that presented all birth stories on a level playing field. That's probably important too, because there's people nowadays that they're LGBTQ people, they get married, and they don't really have a normal birthing situation that you would have. And so the surrogates and different things, whatever. So that's important because I would be a kid going, how'd this work? And if you've read this book, if your child's read this book, one of the most important things about working in children's publishing is the idea that by helping children to read books about a really broad range of subjects, whether that's fiction or nonfiction, you're allowing a child to put themselves in someone else's shoes. And therefore, you're really developing not only

their worldview, but their sense of empathy. Because children do only know about their own experiences. But if they've been introduced to other people's experiences from a young age, it's not going to be surprising to them, or they're not going to feel like it's not as good as their own situation because all those situations have already been shown to them there is no right way to start a family every way to start a family is is equal and it's the love that matters yeah and there's a lot of people that do surrogate stuff and then i guess the there's intofertilization, I think, or infertofertilization. You probably know more than I do. Yeah. So this book covers, it covers sex and it actually explains what happens during sex.

And there is a diagram which some people, so where we're doing scientific stuff, I'll show you some of the spreads of the book. We pull the information out into a round, a sort of roundel, so like a sort of device to hold the scientific information. So here we've got lots of naked people for example but you can see the kind of cross-section of a womb and of a penis so you can understand the kind of technology and we do have a page where there are people having and there is a roundel that kind of explains what's happening but young for the very young children that read this those images they're beyond them they don't really understand them All they do is they look at the sort of broader pictures, which are more narrative, and they ask questions around those images. So we cover sex, we cover interuterine insemination, we cover sperm and egg donation, IVF, surrogacy, adoption. adoption and we also as well as discussing all of these topics and looking at how a baby grows and also how it's born a vaginal birth versus a c-section for example which isn't really covered

in many other books we also talk about more difficult subjects such as what happens when a baby's born too soon or what happens why do some babies not grow so we're really trying to i think the most important thing about this book is I think for a lot of people, they grow up with a sense of kind of shame and anxiety around talking about sex and explaining sex, maybe because that's the way they were raised or they don't feel confident talking to their children about it. who created this book was really to just give parents confidence in having a springboard into having bigger conversations with their kids this is all written in really simple language we don't use any of those terms i've just talked about other than sex we don't use ivi iui or ivs we just talk about how does the sperm meet the egg these are the ways a sperm meets an egg you need a sperm an egg and a place for it to grow you know and a place for a baby to grow those are the three magic things you need to make a baby and then we just very factually look at how you put those things together in different ways is this a book that

you know one of the challenges that parents always have is that aspect of explaining the birds and the bees to to to children does this help or you help them resolve that issue and get out of the trouble? Yeah, I think so. I think also if you have a, there are lots of different ways to approach this book and every family is different. Every parent is different. Everyone raising a child is going to approach this in a different way because there is no right or wrong way to do it. But I think there's so much, you do want your children to know this information and to know accurate information before they're suddenly immersed in the world of smartphones and the internet when they're teenagers and can pick up all kinds of misinformation. You do want them to know the truth. And I think this book is a really

useful tool for allowing parents to find a way into that. So for a young child, you might just show them the page and you might not read any a young child, you might just show them the page and you might not read any of the text. You might just ask them, what do you see in the picture? What do you think is happening? When I show my son that page, he's four, about sex, he just says, the room is so messy. There are clothes all over the floor.

Where are the clothes? Exactly. And I say, yes, because for these two people, in order for them to make a baby they've had to take off their clothes so even though you might not go into the full detail you're already starting to introduce them to ideas around around how babies are made and so if they're not if they're not embarrassed by it hopefully you won't be embarrassed by it and vice versa as adult, you can be confident and not be embarrassed by what you're talking about. Your children will feel comfortable coming to you with questions.

I think this is so important too because one of the challenges people have is they don't have these conversations with their children. I know so many girls when I was a teenager who were getting pregnant. They're like, I didn't really fully understand. I thought pulling out was fine. And all these variations they had, they didn't really have a full, complete knowledge. I know it sounds weird, but they just didn't. And because of it, they got pregnant very early. Yeah.

So this book is really clear. So this book goes straight from small children to adults, and it skips the whole puberty thing because what we're trying to do is demystify the process of how babies are made we are actually working on a separate book at the moment which will be about that kind of growing up and transition from childhood to adulthood and everything that entails but in this book because it's for very young children it's also kind of six five six to kind of nine year olds it's not going into detail around puberty or anything like that or relationships even it's quite factual and scientific if two people want to make a baby if one of them has a penis and one of

them has a vagina you can do it like this if people don't have sperm or eggs that work properly or they don't have a place to grow a baby, you can do it like this. So it's just it's much more basic at this level because it really is intended to be that very first introduction. And here on the kind of second page, we have some naked babies. properly labeling your own anatomy because there are there are adults who don't understand that um a vagina isn't the only part of a woman's genitalia so they don't know the word vulva or that if you don't have the right terminology how can you be expected to you know talk to a doctor if there's a problem if you don't know the proper words so it's and it's also a safety thing there are lots of studies that suggest that children who can accurately their anatomy and feel confident talking about it are less likely to be subject to abuse because the people who might be perpetrators will be aware that these are children that are comfortable talking about

such things therefore are more likely to talk to an adult if something untoward happens, and also are more likely to be aware of things like consent and privacy, because if their parents are talking to them about those things at a young age, they're going to be more aware of them. So there are many reasons for including information like that. And it's probably helpful, like you say, for a stranger danger conversations you'd have with your children where you're like, hey, if somebody, you know, touches you in a certain place and does this, that, or the other, you need to tell dad, you need to mom and run off and that sort of thing. Am I helping that way? Yeah, exactly. I think it's, if you as a parent are

confident in talking to your child about their body and about appropriate touching and inappropriate touching, those children are just going to be more well-informed. So they're going to be hiding this kind of information or not giving children this information because you want to protect them isn't necessarily going to protect them. Nice. Nice. That's important. That's important. People need to understand this. And I've known so many people over the years who've had trauma from childhood because their parents didn't talk to them or teach them. I knew people, I knew a lot of girls, like I said, in high school that got pregnant because they didn't fully understand like everything. And then I've really been surprised.

I've dated women in their thirties that really don't have a good understanding of what that area is about going on down there and stuff. And you're just like, seriously, you live with this thing for some people. There's like a shame sometimes to sex or shame to your body parts. If you come from certain religions, there's a shaming process that like, oh, this is dirty or this is bad or this is wrong. There's all this sort of thing that goes on that I think really confuses people. So this can be pretty helpful to them. Yeah.

So this is the way we wrote it was that it was meant to be really friendly, not scary. And an entry point, it's not exhaustive. It's only 32 pages long. It's really designed to just be that kind of icebreaker to help you have those conversations. And it depends how much you want to explain. If you were a single parent who had chosen to go down the route of IVF, you might want to explain that to your child, or you might rather just explain all the different processes and not ever share that information. That's your decision. But at least it gives you the springboard

that if you did want to have that conversation, that process has been explained on a level playing field with every other way that a family begins. There you go. There you go that process has been explained on a level playing field with every other way that a family begins there you go there you go this has been pretty interesting now where does the stork come in the stork is in here actually is there really a story yeah yeah the stork is in here because we talk about all the different myths the myths that parents tell children when they don't want to talk about it. And you can find, even with really young children, you can find really simple language. Like when my son was younger, for example, and he would ask, he'd see a picture of me and my husband at our wedding. And he would say, but where was I?

Because, you know, they don't understand. And we'd just say, you were tiny. Like when he was smaller. Now he has read this book so he doesn't understand but when he was smaller we would say you were a tiny piece of mummy and a tiny piece of daddy that hadn't met yet so there are ways of even introducing that concept when they're really young and then when they start asking questions how did those two pieces meet this book gives you the answers awesome awesome this is good i should read this i haven't had any kids yet clearly i'm not i haven't learned something so that that could be the vasectomy. I'm not sure. But anything more you want to plug out on the book before we go out? It's really that books are really helpful. Either this book or any other book you feel is the right book for you.

They are such a helpful tool because it can be a shared experience and it can really help to kind of bridge the gap and paper over any cracks in your confidence. Because the other thing is, too, I should mention, kids learn a lot of weird stuff in like elementary school and junior high. I was totally confused because my friends would tell me stuff and be like, well, That sounds like way different than what my mom told me. And I'm like, I don't know what's going on. So I think this is really important to have something like this for them. Thank you. There you go. So Rachel, it's been wonderful to have you. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs, please. So you can find this book wherever good books are sold. It's published by Penguin Random House Dial for Young Readers. So you can also go to their website to find out more about it. There you go. Pick up the book, guys. Making a Baby,

June 22, 2021. Just came out with Rachel Greener. I think this is really important. Like I said, I met so many people that I'm really surprised at how far they get in life. And they're really not familiar with their own bodies. They're not familiar. They've dealt with shaming or some sort of thing where it's, oh, that's a bad thing. And we're all just human. We just need to really just understand who the heck we are. And this, I think this makes it great. Cause I, if I was a dad, I'd just be like, here, read this. This is the birds of the beast story. And we're never going to speak of this again. If you have questions, call Rachel. No, I'm just kidding. So anyway, thanks for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss, the bell notification, Goodreads.com, Fortress

Chris Voss, and all of our groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and everything else. Thank you very much for being on the show with us, Rachel. We certainly appreciate it today. Thank you so much. Thanks, Voss, for tuning in, and we'll see you guys next time. Bye.