Baby or Baby Maker

Babies. All in all they seem like such a terrible idea. Aside from warping your body and upheaving your life, they’re so sticky and smelly and whiny and yeah, you get the point. But they’re babies! So cute and soft and tiny. I’ll eventually have to get around to making one. What’s more, I’ve discovered two perks to being a mom in the work place: respect and maternity leave.

So far in my work life, it seems I have the option of being labeled one of two things: a child or a bearer of children. I get reprimanded, disrespected, condescended to, and altogether ignored because for most of my 50-something year old colleagues, I serve as a reminder of the 20-something “child” they themselves have reared. And this makes me feel so awesome. And the only way I can transition from girl to woman in their eyes is to reproduce, an act which is completely irrelevant to my work performance and yet irrevocably tied to my image there. It makes no sense.

The additional perk to being a mother in the work place is maternity leave. I mean, I assume that it’s pretty miserable trying to raise a newborn and those days off are more of a necessity than a plus. However, today it only took my colleagues 10 minutes to gift 38 hours of their personal sick leave to a woman who just had a baby. That’s craziness! An entire week! It made me want to petition my coworkers for leave hours, you know for the time to go on my equally important Mediterranean Cruise.

So given the choice of baby or baby maker, I think I’ll hold off on procreation for a while longer, but when I do get pregnant I will be milking it for all it’s worth. And yes, of course, pun intended.