My sister-in-law is pregnant with her second baby and I’m dreading buying her a gift. At least we live far away, so I won’t be required to attend the shower.

I complained at work today that I should get a shower for NOT having a baby & that they could bring me leather pants & tequila as gifts. I also hate the thought of all these babies getting brought in & screaming while I’m trying to talk on the phone to customers, but god forbid should someone return from leave without having dragged her babies in first.

PS- Those cards sound terrible with the fetus’s picture on it. I’ve seen so many stupid ultrasounds recently that I’ve also been threatening to bring in my gallstones from my surgery a few years ago if we’re into sharing things removed from our bodies.

That being said, it seems odd to bring a child into the work place. I don’t want to meet them and they don’t want to meet me. It almost seems like a bragging right in a way. Because really, why else would little snookie-kins need to be in my cubical? Unless snookie-kins would like to do some work with me I don’t see the need to take time away from what I’m doing to stop and admire.

CFSince Six - yep, this mother was doing the card thing as well… it was the 3d ultrasound. At that point I left the room.

I’ve stopped going to any baby showers, I find them so dull I end up hating the people who threw it, babies bore the hell out of me and the bingo’s I’ve gotten at the few I have attended have been the most inappropriately personal I’ve ever received. I might send something useful, like cute socks or a onesie, with my regrets but even free alcohol won’t get me to go again.

This all leads me to the question, are parents (and wanna-be parents) out of their minds with optimism, or is my pessimism about the future stamping down on any desire I might have to procreate? Does anyone else feel this way?

This post strikes close to home because I have a coworker on my team whose wife is expecting. I hear about it ALL. THE. DAMN. TIME. Now, I like him, and I have a great team, but honestly. I could care less about what’s going on, etc. I’m not interested in the ultra sounds and the 4D imaging. (Side horror story on this one: so this coworker takes a picture of the 4D imaging that happens to be the face of the little parasite. He photoshops a santa hat on it and puts a caption, “Merry Christmas! See you soon!” And he used that to make Christmas cards with. If I receive one of those, it will go promptly in the trash.)

I was invited to his wife’s babyshower for Sunday. I did not go. I didn’t even bother to get any gift. At first I was thinking of going to show support for a coworker I really like, but I knew I’d be torturously bored. I ended up not going. Now I have a clean bedroom instead.

This is their first baby. So all the talk is not surprising. Further, I wonder if this is going to be considered some “miracle” baby due to the “difficult” pregnancy she has had. Whining about no sex, no money, and how much time even the pregnancy is taking, has already started. Oh. I cannot WAIT until after the baby is born. /sarcasm. Something tells me this coworker is going to get incredibly boring.

I needed to get that off my chest.

I don’t do baby showers. I don’t even really support birthing humans by buying gifts. I considered a small gift to the coworker - not to congratulate him, but more for office politics and continue generated good will with coworkers. I ended up not doing so. I just do NOT like babies or the whole pregnancy and everything surrounding it thing.

This is how I am. I showed up to a group gathering of some friends one time. One guy (who had been LAID OFF for a couple of YEARS) had just had another kid. (Yes, that means the wife got pregnant WHILE he was laid off!) And this was kid number, hold on to your seats … number 7. I wouldn’t tolerate his whines of no money. Anyway, so he brings the kid to the gathering and one of the women was carrying it and cooing and all that jazz. She turned, saw me, and cames towards me, starting to hold the baby out so I would carry it. The instant I noticed the gesture I started to step back and I crossed my arms. Now, this was not on purpose, it was a reflexive action on my part - out of fear of someone handing me a baby. She gave me a quizzical look and asked, “Don’t you want to carry her?” I said, “No. I don’t do babies. I don’t babysit, I don’t carry them, I don’t feed or change them.” I had not been offered another baby in that group again. LOL.

I have a friend who has a kid. She’s a coworker too. She’s a responsible parent and I generally don’t mind her kid around. But I won’t necessarily do anything with it: i.e. carry it, blah blah blah. I just recently told her that I don’t do the baby thing and I’m not interested in it. I said I was afraid to tell that to people, especially parents. And being a woman it’s almost expected of me to coo over babies but it’s just not there for me. Fortunately she is cool with it. She’s very practical. She’s pregnant with her second one now.

Then my boyfriend/partner has some really cool friends - a couple. We just recently reacquainted ourselves with them and been hanging out more. I really like them. They’re Good People. But during one of our hanging out times, she was talking about how they planned on having kids. *sigh* And our local No Kidding group sucks. Last time I went so many people there wanted to talk about NOT having kids. I’m so uninterested in even that. I think the boyfriend and I have pretty much settled into it just being us and everyone else around us will have bred. I’ve given up on finding a CF couple friendship.

I keep in contact with my childed friends on a one-to-one basis - me, her and her baby (and sometimes our partners). I find that this way is the way that I can have a decent conversation with my friend. Since my friend is clearly interested in child-related stuff, I will always ask about the baby/child. But I am careful not to let the conversation become too focused on that stuff.

All of our showers are at work, during lunch, NO BABIES!

#1 reason I used to go is the food ROCKS! I would sit there all smug and happy thinking I would never have to go thru the crap and expense that they chose to go thru. And it made me SO HAPPY!

Now that I work remotely from my home….you guessed it…NO MORE SHOWERS yay!

I give up.

I can’t put up with baby showers (or bridal showers for that matter). Luckily I haven’t had to deal with any in-office baby showers, but if I did, I’d probably still stay at my desk and say I was just swamped. There would be so many people fawning over her, she probably wouldn’t even notice I was missing, anyway.

I tend to avoid baby showers at work, because often, I’m not close to whoever it is who’s preggers. The attitude is that every woman at work would be happy to go just because of the prospect of a baby coming soon turns me off.