When Everyone (Including Telemarketers) Is Talking To You About Babies

If you’ve been reading my blog awhile you know that I have baby fever.

You’ve been with me as I awkwardly bought my pregnancy test, laughed with me as I used a baby generator to try to figure out what our children would look like, and read my list of all the ways I have prepared for a baby.

The newest development in this stage of my life is that complete strangers are beginning to randomly bring up the topic of babies.

Now, every newlywed gal knows that there will be well-meaning (or just terribly curious) relatives and friends prodding her about when she is planning on producing offspring. This doesn’t bother me (most of the time), and since I am pretty open on my blog about baby fever it pretty much comes with the territory.

However, what I wasn’t prepared for is other people asking me about babies. People that shouldn’t know that I have baby fever. People who seem to be able to smell my interest in babies. They just seem to know.

Yesterday, I was kindly chatting with a telemarketer who called while I was at work. She was being all schmooze-y and charming as she tried to make connections with me in the hopes that I would buy her product. Since I am in charge of marketing and a lot of the purchasing decisions in the office, I get a lot of these types of calls. This telemarketer in particular was a warm, Southern woman:
“How do you-ah spell you-ah name, Beth-ah-neey? With a “y” or with an “i”?” She drawled.

I figured she was going to be mailing me some information: “With a “y”.”
“Ah-kay. My daught-ah is also named Bethani, only I spelled it with an “i”. She is eighteen, and has a baby. Her baby’s name is Amethyst which I think is interesting, because Amethyst is an autumn birth stone, right? But she wasn’t born in the autumn.”

The telemarketer laughed cheerily over this random fact.

Side note: I googled which month has amethyst as its birthstone, and it is February. Most definitely not in the autumn. Which sparked the question, why did this southern grandma think amethyst was an autumnal birthstone? Was the baby Amethyst born in February?! So many unanswered questions. Now I wish she would call me back so I could ask!

Long after I got off the phone, I thought about that Bethani with an “i” in the South somewhere who named her baby Amethyst.

I shrugged it off as a singular occurrence.

Then my coworker tossed an informational sheet pertaining to what supplements to take before trying to conceive. She had found it in an old drawer: “just in case you want it in the future” she said, airily.

Not to mention that the Louise Penny mystery novel that I randomly grabbed at the library, and started to read is a mystery surrounding quintuplets.

Babies are cropping up everywhere. On the phone, in the office, in my books.

It’s a conspiracy, you guys.

Or maybe I am just wearing baby-colored glasses. That could be it too, I guess.

But mostly, I think it is a conspiracy.

Any baby anecdotes you want to talk with me about? Go for it!