My coworker, K, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl six weeks ago. She brought in little A to meet the office the other day.
We stand around the water cooler, people taking turns holding baby A, cooing, oohing, ahhhing, and generally exclaiming over the widely-agreed adorableness incarnate. She sleeps blissfully through it all. K plays the accepted part: the shining, but exhausted, new mama. She fields the usual questions. Does A sleep through the night? (Not yet, but four hours last night.) Is maternity leave just flying by? (It is.) K spouts the latest stats on how much little A weighs, and how long she is, to approving nods and smiles from mothers, fathers, aunts, and uncles. K asks me if I’d like to hold little A. Er...generally, I stay out of the way of holding the little ones. I demur with a shy smile. "I’m afraid I’d drop her," I say. "She looks like such a fragile little doll."
We note that our coworker G, who married a week before my husband and I did, is now an expectant father. His wife is due in April, someone said. We all follow K to G’s cube and shower G with congratulations. We talk about how another coworker is due in just a few months. And then conversation turns to our coworker N, who’s the youngest of us. She’s engaged to be married.
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