Trumped by Triplets

Over the past few years I have managed to create a life for myself where I don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to. This is very important to me, because I'm shy and generally distrustful of other people. I don't want to get into any conversation that I can't easily get out of; I figure it's only a matter of time until one person says something that offends, or at the very least confuses, the other person. And so I work from home, I turn down projects that require me to go into offices (actually, that has more to do with the fact that I loathe commuting and fluorescent lighting), I talk to my friends and my family and that's about it.

All of that started to change when I got pregnant. Because strangers like to talk to pregnant women. The more pregnant you are, the more people want to ask you 1.when are you due and 2. is it a boy or a girl. I have no idea what causes people to ask these questions, and what they plan on doing with the information once you answer them. It's like there's a plainclothes cadre of poll-takers out there, all doing a massive survey of pregnant women to find out when they're due and what sex their babies are.

Truth be told, at first I found the attention almost exciting. It was like people were saying to me, hey, you're different! We noticed! I especially liked talking to other random pregnant women (because when you're pregnant and you see another pregnant woman you're basically required by law to stop what you're doing and ask her where she's delivering and how her pregnancy has been going) because at least they sometimes had useful information, like what maternity store was having a sale. This changed somewhere around my ninth month. At that point, I'd HAD IT with being pregnant and I just wanted everyone to stop talking to me and leave me alone in my misery. I didn't want to compare any more notes with any other pregnant women. I found myself wanting to tell people who asked the sex of the baby that it was of a third, as-yet-unnamed sex.

And now that I have joined the stroller-pushing ranks I've discovered something horrible: it only gets worse. Not everyone has the guts to walk over and start talking to a pregnant woman (there is the off-chance, after all, that she is just oddly shaped and not pregnant at all). But everyone loves a baby.

The conversation currently falls into a fairly predictable pattern. 1. Is it a boy? (Milo is usually dressed in a fluffy blue bunting at these outings, so boy is a pretty good guess). 2. How old is he? Whereupon I give his age in weeks (currently 4, for those keeping track) and people say one of two things. If they are without child they say some variation on "Oh, wow, tiny." If they are with child they say, "You're brave for leaving the house so soon."

Then things get more complicated. Because if they are also pushing a baby in a stroller, I am expected to say to them 1. Is it a boy or a girl? followed by 2. How old is he/she? followed by 3. He/she is SOO cute! But, of course, I don't want to say these things. Because I didn't want to be having the conversation in the first place. At which point I am basically screwed either way. My choices are to continue the conversation by asking questions that I don't care about hearing the answer to, or to be unspeakably obnoxious and not ask the expected questions.

After four weeks of living as a sort of magnet for the baby-obsessed, however, I have come to expect that if I go out in public with Milo someone at some point will try to talk to me. So i was somewhat surprised when yesterday I walked into Connecticut Muffin and no one said a word. I ordered myself a Chai tea and sat down, wondering what strange vortex I'd walked into. Wasn't my baby still cute? Didn't anyone want to know how old he was? Then I noticed that everyone in the store was looking out the window. The door to the store swung open and in walked a woman pushing a stroller that contained not one baby, not two babies, but triplets. The entire store erupted into a loud clamor of "ooh, are they triplets? how old are they? triplets, can you imagine?".

I looked at Milo, sitting quietly in his stroller, his big blue eyes transfixed by the light fixtures. Oh yes, he loves lighting that boy. "You've been trumped by triplets," I told him, then settled back into my seat to enjoy my Chai, and the fact that no one was talking to me.