BABIES. BABIES EVERYWHERE.
My workplace has baby fever. Please for the love of god send help.
Our receptionist’s daughter-in-law just popped a kid out at 4am the other morning, and she won’t shut up about it.
Our chatty janitor knows someone-or-other whose due date is in less than a week, and she won’t shut up about it.
And yesterday one of the department managers and his wife brought their four day old baby by the office to show him off and not shut up about it in stereo.
GOOD JOB YOU MADE A THING THANKS FOR SHARING NOW CAN YOU BACK OFF AND LET ME GET BACK TO MY SPREADSHEETS PLEASE?
…uh, I mean…congrats?
I know it’s hard to believe, but some of us just have no interest in any of this miracle of life stuff.
It’s not that I don’t like babies. They’re great and quirky and portable, and necessary for the continued survival of the human race (or so I’m told). I just happen to prefer them from a distance and with minimal conversation about their entrance into this world. Sorry I don’t feel any pressing need to take a deep whiff of your little bundle of joy’s “new baby smell” or be regaled with the birth story of a woman I’ve never met. Especially when my boss has just asked me to drop everything and put together a giant report breaking down five years of sales data before the end of the day.
So when New Dad Manager showed up with wifey and their swaddled collective DNA in tow, I stayed tucked behind my computer hoping I looked either invisible or busy enough that they’d leave me be.
HAHAHAHAHA yeah no, we all know I don’t have that kind of luck.
They made a beeline straight for me.
This was probably my own fault. I got really excited when they brought in their new puppy to visit a while back. They most likely assumed I’d be just as thrilled, if not more so, to meet their kid.
Welp, can’t be right all the time.
Like, sure, he was a cute baby. No elongated alien skull or I-just-ran-into-a-glass-door smooshy face going on or anything. But we’re all well aware I’m as socially awkward as they come. And despite babies’ stellar reputation for being the solution to everyone’s problems, oddly enough shoving a newborn in my face doesn’t do anything to help me be less terrible around people.
So there was a moment of complete silence as I tried to come up with something to say that was more original than, “Congrats, he’s beautiful,” and then I realized I was taking too long and ended up just blurting out, “Hi there, little one…you’re so new!” Which sounded lame as fuck but I couldn’t think of anything else to follow it up with to make it less lame, and on top of that I got distracted by the gorgeous hand-knitted blanket the kid was wrapped in and instinctively started trying to figure out the pattern, but then my coworker rescued us all by coming around the corner and shrieking, “OH MY GOD, IS THAT THE BABY?!”
That brought everyone else out of the woodwork pretty quickly, and soon there was just a big cooing mass of people in the middle of the office and I could safely duck out and return to tearing my hair out over financial records from half a decade ago.
And I would’ve stayed happily mentally checked out from the whole baby ordeal from that point onward, if something New Dad Manager said hadn’t rung out clear as a bell above the babble and smacked me right in the angries.
“Oh, we had a C-section.”
My ears must need cleaning, I could’ve sworn I just heard you say, “WE had a C-section.”
Oh, you did? Haha, well in that case…
NO. BAD HUSBAND. NO NO NO NO NO.
Allow me to dust off my soapbox.
You (pl.) most certainly did not have a C-section, unless your doctor was just that inept that he had you, the father, prepped for surgery and cut open before realizing whoops, duh, the baby’s in the lady. And if that was the case, please tell me at which hospital this took place so I can NEVER GO THERE.
No sir, it was your dear wife – who by the way is some kind of goddamn superhero for climbing the stairs to our office only four days after major abdominal surgery – who got carved up to bring this small creature with the delicate eyelashes and tiny toes into your life. It was your wife whose uterus just had the out of body experience, your wife who now has parenthood permanently etched into her flesh whether she likes it or not.
Let’s not cheapen that by throwing around thoughtless plurals, shall we?
And if you think I’m overreacting and you’re just trying to be supportive and a team player, humor me and take a minute to consider how supported and appreciative you’d feel hearing your wife say, “Three kids was enough, so we had a vasectomy.”
I thought so.
Good talk.
Spoken Like A True Nut 