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 
The wife of a guy I work with has pumped out seven bundles of joy. When she had the fifth in the oven I asked him, “Did you hear they found out what causes that?” Maybe I was talking to the wrong person although as the old saying goes it takes two to do the horizontal mambo.
And I apologize for thanking my lucky chromosome that no one around my office insists I should see the baby.
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Our IT guy is friends with the parents of a girl I went to high school with who converted to Orthodox Judaism to marry her husband. They’re on baby number 7 now. IT guy loves informing me whenever a new one’s on the way just to see me cringe.
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Yeah, I’m not a baby person. I raised my 4. Dunzo. The word “precious” works for everything. “Oh, he’s so precious”. That means he’s fugly, but the parent will beam.
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I don’t know why but I absolutely cannot say the word “precious” with a straight face. I’ve be all, “Oh, he’s so precious!” and then inadvertently snicker and then the parents would hate me forever.
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She was out and about FOUR DAYS afterwards? I had major abdominal surgery (not a C sec though) and in a similar time I had only just pulled off getting-out-of-bed-without-calling-the-nurse. I had to be in hospital for a week–which was just standard procedure for that sort of thing.
That lady is from Krypton or some shit.
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Right? Like, walking around I can understand, but our stairs are no joke.
I can’t believe he made her stop by in the first place. Apparently our office was on the way to the person they were visiting next, but holy shit if I was only 4 days postpartum AND healing from playing “woman being sawed in half” for real, my husband’s coworkers would NOT be on my list of priorities.
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Great talk! Totally with you – more interested in the crocheted blanket. And it doesn’t puke.
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It was a _very_ lovely blanket. I need to go cruise Ravelry and see if there’s a close match on there that I can make.
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C-section recovery is almost entirely a factor of age—I was up and walking within the hour, moving normally the next day. I was also 20. My friend had one at 28 and was like, “You’re so lucky you didn’t have a c-section, this recovery is killer.” ‘Nother friend had one at 35 and… I haven’t actually seen her yet. Think she might still be laid up.
But I too wish people would stop showing me their babies, telling me about their babies, handing me their babies. It’s a baby. It looks an awful lot like every other baby I’ve seen, except for mine which looked utterly unique and perfect because Nature and Hormones and Bonding. It does not smell magical, it smells like whatever products you use on it. And maybe poo. Also, please wipe its face before showing it to me, since I know you’re going to ignore the previous instruction set; I don’t need to see the snot bubbles—they are not cute.
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Ugh, the snot bubbles…
It doesn’t help that like a dozen of my Facebook friends either JUST had new babies or have babies that are celebrating first birthdays around now, so my feed these days is 90% drool-covered chins and chubby arm rolls. I don’t need more of those in real life, thanks. I’m all baby-ed out.
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Lately I have had an issue with babies in breweries. When I go out to have a beer, I do not want to sit and listen to some screaming baby. And I am a parent. You know what I did not do when my kids were infants/toddlers? Take them to bars. And they are now teenagers. You know what I don’t do? Take them to bars. Bars are a parents escape. Not a playground.
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Aw, they’re just being proactive. Gotta start early if you want your kid to develop a proper appreciation for a good ale before they get peer-pressured into thinking Coors Light is okay.
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I do agree with that at least.
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Hahahah
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….and apparently I hit the hot button that posts without me clicking ‘Post Comment’? I guess my fingers are overly excited today. 😛 At my last job I was sitting at a table of ladies of varying ages and babies came up…. I was legitimately shocked that I was the only one there that didn’t want kids. 😛
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We do still seem to be a bit of a rarity.
I remember my mother always scoffing at her childfree cousin’s Christmas cards – “Oh, well they WOULD spend Christmas skiing in Aspen, must be so easy when you don’t have kids!” – and wondering why more people didn’t just skip the whole kid thing.
In the back of my mind I always assumed that not having children was something that would become a lot more commonplace as time went on, and I guess to some extent it has, but I’m also one of the few people I know who didn’t break into a mad sprint to get on the baby train immediately after getting married, so…idk.
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Much like weddings, I guess babies get romanticized like crazy, to the point you forget that you’re paying thousands of dollars for a dress you’ll wear once, inviting a bunch of people you don’t really like because you need to have X number of seats filled, etc. I think babies are great–I was even one, once–but I also think that the mad dash happens because after college, there’s not much “social community” except in motherhood. And that can be a pretty big draw for people who see their friends pairing off and disappearing.
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I’m sure that’s a big part of it for some people. Although I do know a few who just seemed to have a kind of “IT’S BABY TIME, BITCHES!” switch flip in their heads one day out of nowhere.
Meanwhile, the thought of all the required social interaction that would come with having a kid scares the living daylights out of my poor little social anxiety-ridden soul. Play dates. School functions. Strangers who want to say hello and coo at my little darling and other strangers who inexplicably feel entitled to tell me how to raise my little darling…just thinking about it all makes me want to go hide in the cupboard.
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So is this a bad time to mention I am going to be a grandma?
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*backs away from computer and begins sprinting at top speed in the opposite direction, crashing through several walls and leaving cartoonesque Nutty-shaped holes behind in each*
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You’re a nut.
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Wow, you’re surrounded!
For me it’s not just babies – I seem to prefer dogs to people of all ages.
People are so proud of their babies, and it’s like, good for you, but it’s hardly an accomplishment. Children have babies. Junkies have babies. they’re kind of everywhere. If you give birth to a rutabaga, call me!
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I can’t stand to hear a couple say “We’re pregnant.” Uhmm, no, she is pregnant, dude’s part is pretty much over with. Sure, you are going to be a father but YOU ARE NOT PREGNANT. Unless you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger in that one movie, what was it? Junior?
When my WIFE was pregnant (not me!) we went over to a couple’s house we had just met a few days earlier. She insisted on showing us the birth video of her kid. We agreed out of politeness thinking it would be your standard over the shoulder angle footage. Nope, this was down in the business, straight shot at all the plumbing and what came out. They weren’t fazed at all by showing it to us.
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…I have no words.
Like, I think society still has a bit too much of a stick up its ass when it comes to nudity, and I’ve certainly spent my fair share of summer days on our local clothing-optional beach surrounded by strangers wearing nothing but smiles, but there’s still something just so…unsettling about a couple you’ve just met showing you a video of something that intimate and personal.
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Good to see you around again.
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