How-To Day: Composing a Baby Announcement

To: Everyone@Work.com

Baby announcements shouldn't just go to the people who work directly with the new mother and father -- the entire company deserves to hear about the inner workings of the womb. This is why e-mail is the new mode of choice for publishing what came out of your body today.

From: NotTheMomma

If you are the parents, you probably won't have enough time or energy to announce the birth to everyone, so you'll have to hire one of your work friends as a town crier of sorts. The parents' job will be to present the baby in person once it's several months old so all the socially awkward people in your company can make banal smalltalk about their own baby experiences.

Subject: Welcome Baby LastName!

The tone of the subject should be slightly threatening, as if everyone in their right mind had better be welcoming of the new kid on the block OR ELSE. Don't actually give the name of the new baby in the subject -- that should be saved for the body of the e-mail. Otherwise it'd be like seeing Jaws in the first thirty minutes of the movie.

Loquisha Aaron Arnolds entered the world at 11:17 PM on Sunday, September 3, 2006.

The name of the baby should be the first thing in the body of the e-mail, because honestly, all people care about is seeing what kind of high-school-age-scarring you've affixed to your offspring. No one really cares about the time of birth, but it's customary to put it in. It might get you a few comments at work sharing experiences (i.e. "I was on the pot straining at the stool at 11:17! It's a good omen").

She weighed 9 pounds 8 ounces.

Your baby is not a trout and no one will be cooking it up for dinner. However, there is an unspoken contest to see who can have the most massive baby, so your e-mail announcement will be compared to all other announcements in the mail archives. No one really cares about these numbers unless they are unusually extreme. For a good time, lie about the weight and picture everyone in the company wincing when they visualize a tiny mother popping out a sixteen pound baby.

Mother, father, and daughter are all doing fine.

This is an obligatory line, to reassure readers that the mother had no complications and the father didn't slip on a janitor's wet mop in the hospital hallway. Even if something went horribly wrong, you need to include this line to prevent questions. If something weren't fine, would you really mention it?