We took babyX(2) to a halloween party recently and it was great! If you are wondering, baby was Baby Groot in a pot, and she looked AMAZING (if only you could see her)! Then really she spent most of the night sleeping in a ring-sling on my front and it was ideal. My partner was Baby Driver and I was nothing that had “baby” in the name at all, to my chagrin.
Wearing a baby at a party is … interesting. A more than negligible percentage of people asked, commented, mumbled, or whispered, “is that a real baby”? Like, up through and continuing to ask four hours later as we were leaving…which would make sense if I had a costume that needed a baby accessory, but I did not. It would be totally weird and nonsensical to be wearing a fake baby with a punk-rock Leia outfit!
Some people are TOO excited about the baby. I can really only hold 2 conversations right now – (1) baby; and (2) work. That is literally all the hours of my day and everything I am currently devoting energy towards. And I am SO BORED by this fact about myself! But some people REALLY want to talk about babies, to where I am talking about my OWN baby and I am STILL bored. Some exits had to be made – graceful or not!
One (white, obvi) woman asked me about my baby’s clearly different race than mine. I live in very diverse community and it’s been fascinating…not one person in my community has asked even one question about my baby’s race. This woman was not ill-intentioned at all, she was just curious, and mostly that’s ok with me. But sort of like the question “why don’t you have kids”, asking about a baby’s race being different than its caregiver is maybe just too invasive, even if it’s an obvious thing and normal to be curious about? Because we adopted (for infertility, for love, for religion); because the baby is mixed-race and you just can’t tell and now I have to give weirdly personal information about my relationship; because baby is in foster care; for so many different fairly private reasons that just…maybe should not be asked of a stranger. I’m not sure!
Same party, a black or mixed race (it was dark at the party) man about my age saw the baby and just GUSHED about her, for like 15 seconds, and it was great! Super charming and sincere – but without any need to talk about babies WAY. TOO. MUCH. An hour or so later, baby woke up for a bit and he happened to walk by when her giant eyes were staring around her, and he bent over and just spent like…a full minute just looking into her face, and sharing a moment with her. He didn’t ask any invasive questions. He didn’t overstay his time. He didn’t even ask to hold her he just…had this very real moment of making himself available to her in a super open way. I’m super grateful on behalf of my baby.
Overall, going to a party helped restore a really important piece of normalcy to my life – I got to feel like ME while still caregiving and storing up baby-time for my out–of-town trip; 3 whole days with NO BABY.