The things people do when you are holding a baby

It's really strange. The way people interact with me when I'm holding Etta, or have her in a store is really unlike anything I've ever experienced before. In Target, I've had several women stop me, ask how old she is, how much she weighed when she was born, whether she's eating and sleeping well and then proceed to tell me all kinds of things about their kids.

A few weeks ago I was at the doctor's office with Cree and we were waiting for a while, so I had Etta in the lobby and we were walking around, she was sleeping, etc. One of the people in there told me about her 2 kids, 17 and 18, and that she was looking for a companion/lap dog for her mom. A guy reminded me that I shouldn't pick her up every time she cries, because then she'll be spoiled. A woman told me about when she had her daughter, and asked if I had any stitches and told me about the importance of taking time to heal.

A (rather young, I must say) nurse told me that she had SIX kids and really loved babies and that her oldest is 18 and that none of them had her eyes. Later, she came back and asked to hold Etta and when she gave her back she told me that she'd had her tubes tied, but there is some kind of expiration on that procedure -- 12 years or something -- and that she was pregnant again, but she wasn't going to keep it.

It was heartbreaking. You could tell she really wanted to have the baby, but that she thought she shouldn't because she had so many already. Her oldest daughter is also pregnant, and isn't keeping hers either. It was really sad, she didn't well up, but I did. I asked her how she felt about it, and she just sighed.