BABIES AT WORK

Never stand between a new born baby and a bunch of women, because you could easily get crushed to death in the stampede. There’s nothing like a baby in the building to bring all the women running to see it, sandals slapping on their feet, like they’ve never seen a baby before. This is, even if they’ve been a mother many times over.
They all lean in a circle, beaming and shrieking at a sleeping oblivious 9 pound plus person, who can’t distinguish between a door and a Doberman. That glow in their wide eyes, as they gaze adoringly at a wrinkled bald bundle with the tiniest hands and smallest feet, keeps the species going.
All the discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of labor that they had and all the problems they may be having with their own grown belligerent kids vanish like a puff of baby powder in the breeze. Invariably, they want another baby STAT!
They start squirming with motherhood hormones squirting thru them. They reach out to hold, touch, squeeze, kiss and smell the baby. They all want their turn holding the Pampers one. They want to again experience the joy of holding a new born baby, like they did when their babies were born.
It brings back all those old baby memories of holding, rocking and loving their children before they turned independent and struggled to break away and become adults. A new born baby takes them back to the beginning of their own families when they were young and just starting out. The propagation of the species stirs in their very souls. Time stands still reflected in the blue eyes of a new born baby.
The sleeping baby gets passed from loving arms to loving arms till it wakes up bewildered. Fed up, it starts to bawl, kick and flail at the indignity of it all. Can’t a person just sleep without getting pawed over by a bunch of women?
Then the women become amazed at this righteous indignation, as if for the first time all over again. They delight in its discomfort and in their efforts to calm it down. The baby’s wailing brings out the rest of the women like the fire sirens start the firemen running.
Who knows how many families begin the night a weary mother brings her new born into work. How many husbands have been blindsided with the bulletin that their wives want another baby now, before they’ve even gotten the first ones thru grade school?
All because a new mother wants to show off her baby and get a short break by handing it over to all the other women at work who grab for it and threaten never to give it up. The mother collapses at her work desk and returns briefly to the world of the wide awake and working women.
And how do the men in the building respond to the beautiful baby being passed around? Do they rush up for their chance to hold it? Do they stare adoringly into its face? Well no, they usually stay as far away as possible.
As a rule, we men don’t really want to hold a new born baby. All we see is danger, Will Robinson, danger! We have catastrophic fantasies and can see us slipping, tripping, falling and dropping the baby onto the hard floor. WHAP! WAAA!! Then we’re pulled apart by an army of appalled women as the baby’s rushed to the ER.
If we’re forced into holding it by nagging, then we cradle it like it was a ticking bomb that could go boom with the slightest jiggle. We hunker over and try to make the baby part of our concave chest, so we can’t possibly drop it, unless our whole body crashes to the floor.
The women laugh and say lighten up, the baby won’t break. But we know it can, if we’re our usual clumsy bumbling selves. Fathers don’t really start truly feeling comfortable with their children’s breakability till they can rough house a little with them and the kids can punch back. Then the fun begins, but let the ladies hold the babies.