The Baby in the Meeting

I will not go into the explanation of how I ended up at a meeting with a coworker and a three month old baby of no connection to either of us. It is enough to say that my coworker was thrilled to be babysitting at work for three hours, which happened to be exactly how long we were supposed to meet for.

As I am not good with children, you can imagine how much help I was. And as my coworker could simply not get enough of this baby, you can imagine how productive we were. At least I got to check my email during a diaper change.

One of the various times my coworker tried to get the baby to stop fussing so we could again look at our agenda and wonder aloud how we weren’t making any progress, my coworker decided that the baby was hungry and heated up some milk. With arms full of baby, she asked me to stick out my wrist so she could test the temperature of the milk, which I absentmindedly did while trying to maintain a thread of a productive conversation.

“Too hot,” I said, and went back to discussing event logistics.

But then I saw all the paraphernalia laid out: the bottles and nipples, the pacifiers, the pan for warming the milk and the strange, IV-drip looking bag that the milk was stored in.

And then it hit me. I had breastmilk on my wrist. I was standing there with someone’s overheated breastmilk on me.

Maybe other people know what to do in this situation. Maybe this is common. Maybe there is some socially correct response. But for a single girl who’s not good with kids, I stood there staring at someone else’s bodily secretions wondering what the hell I should do. Do I lick it up? It is just a couple drops of milk; perhaps that is the polite thing to do. But there was no way in hell that was going to happen. Do I wipe it on my jeans? I just washed these jeans, and I don’t want to go around the rest of the day thinking about the dried breastmilk on my jeans. Do I go find the nearest sterilizing equipment? Perhaps overkill.

In the end I pulled a high school boy move and wiped it on my sock.

Now, I’m pretty good at not being awkward and taking things in stride. First dates don’t get to me anymore, and I’m willing to stick out a three-hour meeting with a random baby. But when the baby’s mother showed up to reclaim said baby? I had trouble making eye contact. Seriously. I knew if I looked at her only one thought would be in my head:

Your boob juice is on my sock.