Last week I went to Babies R Us as an office outing. My office has three pregnant people in it, you see. Actually, only two, because we just found out that one of those babies was born last night. I think we’re going to visit the mom and baby today after work. Anyway, the other two are due in the next couple of months and we’ve been having all these baby showers and everything, not to mention the endless conversations along the lines of Cloth Vs. Disposable Diapers, See How Much Bigger My Belly Is Today Than Yesterday, Furnishing A Nursery. The pregnant people like to regale us during lunch…we eat lunch together every day and we seem to have instituted a policy wherein we only discuss religion, sex, or politics at the table…about The Caesarean, the Induction, the Breaking of the Waters. The non-pregnant people started out all goggle-eyed and horrified, but by now we are birth-stories veterans. We nod intelligently when someone says, “Well, I was dilated four centimeters and I don’t even want to tell you how much I was effaced.” Two of the moms are planning to bring the babies into work part time after they get back from their leaves, and so we’ve been getting instructions along the lines of snuglis and collapsible cribs and nursing (“You guys don’t mind if I just pump in the corner, right?”). It’s been pretty trippy, to be honest with you, but I’m treating it as though I am in the process of writing a cutting-edge ethnography on Pregnancy Today. “While the natives are persistent in their beliefs that epidural anesthesia is the appropriate pain management technique during labor, some of them also subscribe to the theory of hypnobirth and have been seen to mutter, during Braxton-Hicks contractions that occur during working hours, ‘My cervix is a blossom, tightly budded. At the right damn moment it will flower into bloom and bring me my precious blossom of a baby.’” The Margaret Mead of Co-Worker Pregnancy, that’s me.
So you can imagine me, going to Babies R Us, right? Four non-pregnant people and one pregnant (who happens to be my cool boss), all piled into the pregnant person’s minivan, heading up to Lynnwood. We were shopping for one of the baby showers and had a registry list. Did you know that you can register for baby stuff, just like when you get married? Does anyone know if this is a married-and/or-pregnant-person option only, or can regular non-married non-pregnant losers get in on it too? Oh, right, Amazon wishlist. I got that covered. Anyway, we tooled around, registry list in hand, and got all sorts of things. A special baby bath. A special baby brush and comb set. A special baby box of special baby detergent (with what looks like many more chemicals than the hippie stuff I use, I noticed). Special baby towels and blankets and wipes and first aid kits and shampoo and lotion and mittens and socks and bottles. Really, the mind boggles. We had to be extra sneaky because the mom for whom we were getting all this doesn’t know the gender of her baby, so we had to avoid any of the overtly feminine (pink, frilly) or masculine (striped) stuff. We got a lot of yellow. I successfully lobbied for a green frog special baby towel though, to break it up a little.
Seriously, the gender socialization? Begins so young. I sound like my 1993 first semester of college self up in here, don’t I. We were having all these conversations, all these tense conversations, there in the Babies R Us in Lynnwood, about what would happen if you dressed a girl in red or a boy in…call the law!..pink. My boss kept saying, whenever we noticed a little dress in purple or blue or something that she might like, “I’m going for the pink, I really want people to know she’s a girl.” I trotted out this small trivia bit that I heard somewhere one time to the effect that two hundred years ago, the gendered colors for babies were reversed, i.e. pink for boys and blue for girls. Blue was considered a weak, cool color, and pink was more energetic, supposedly. I wish my Google search had confirmed this, but I can’t find anything on it. Just trust me, okay? I’ve taken a lot of sociology, I know what I’m taking about. No, really.
Anyway, there are acres and acres of pink frilly things, and about two racks of striped things. Apparently babies don’t like earth tones. I kind of feel for the moms of boys, you know? It can’t be that much fun to trundle the little one into a ringer onesie and call it a day, you know? I think if I had kids I would be bucking really hard for a girl, just so I could tape a bow on her bald head. Maybe. I don’t know if I would be one of those moms who is all about Gender Neutral and dressing the kids in red and green and yellow only. I have a little suspicion that I might get very into pinafores (as my mom did with me and my sister).
This is only one among many reasons I think I shouldn’t have kids. I had this realization about three years ago that I was smack dab in the middle of my child-bearing years, biologically speaking. It was strange to think my body could do that, if given the chance. (I’m assuming here.) It was strange to realize that, but it didn’t make me have any “maternal instinct” or anything. I don’t have baby fever even though it really does feel like everyone I know is having a baby this year. I am interested, in hearing about pregnancy and childbirth and being a mom, and by now I even have a couple of opinions on the subject…for example, I am firmly in the cloth diaper camp…but it’s that aforementioned anthropological, intellectual interest, not a when-I-have-my-own interest. I know a lot more about Piaget’s developmental stages than about how it feels to hold one’s very own baby or to listen to it cry all day and night, you know? I think I want to keep it that way. This isn’t, obviously, an immediate issue for me, but I feel pretty certain I don’t want any of my own. I think I’m too young. I think I’m too selfish. I’m afraid of losing my self to Mommy. I think I’ll want to give them back at the end of the day. My own mother says that having kids should be a last resort…if those mom feelings aren’t actually I-think-I-want-a-puppy feelings or gee-I’m-bored feelings or I-like-to-dress-up-little-girls-in-pinafores feelings, if you can’t be satisfied with anything else but full time, lifetime parenthood, then kids it is. I don’t have those. I’ve thought about doing something like doula training if I ever start to feel that way, but on the whole, I think I’d be a much better auntie than a mom.
Which is fortunate, right, because the way things are shaping up this year, it looks like there are a lot of positions currently open. Need a babysitter? I’m totally free.