One of my favorite parts about being this pregnant — one month to go — is how comfortable strangers feel in approaching me and striking up a conversation. In the dry cleaner’s, the fruit store, the Gap, countless taxis, and in Central Park, New Yorkers from all walks of life want to know when I’m due, if I’m having a boy or a girl, and how I’m feeling.

Since I’m not a particularly social person, I’m always surprised that I enjoy these conversations. Instead of viewing the attention as intrusive, or insincere, I feel as though these New Yorkers want to share in the magical optimism that having a baby brings.

“I just had to pick you up,” a Haitian taxi driver gushed as I plopped into his back seat after he performed a risky U-turn to pick me up on a rainy night. “My wife always tells me I have no idea what it’s really like to be pregnant, but I see you standing there and I think to myself, ‘I am definitely going to give that lady a ride.’ How much longer do you have left?”

After I answered, he proceeded to give me the lowdown of his family: two children, one boy and one girl. He gave me the names, the personalities, the sibling rivalries. I enjoyed hearing about his children and smiled as I imagine his wife telling him — as I might tell my own husband — that he has no idea what it’s like to be pregnant.

“Is this your first?” a woman in her 40s kindly asked me last week as I waited to buy a few teachers’ presents. She had a warm smile on her face and I could see she was bursting to give me some pointers. I almost didn’t have the heart to tell her that this wasn’t my first, but my fifth.

“Your fifth!” she shrieked. “I was about to tell you that you should get your sleep now, and other silly things you say to people when they’re expecting their first baby, but that hardly seems like the thing to say to someone who already has four kids.”

She then fired away countless questions about why I wanted so many children, and what my other children thought of the impending delivery. I don’t think I even answered any of the questions — it was heartening to soak up a bit of her enthusiasm.

At the post office buying stamps, two elderly women cornered me. “I think it’s a boy,” one of them said to the other. Her friend disagreed. “A girl, for sure,” she said, looking me up and down. “What do you have at home?” they wanted to know. When I told them, they had another question, and another, and another. They told me about their grandchildren, and there seemed to be an unspoken competition as to who would be a great-grandmother first.

And then there is the Rastafarian outside my building each morning as I take my children to school. “It’s a boy, mon,” he says to us as we pass at 8 a.m.

“Are you sure?” I always ask him as my children try to decide what to make of this striking character.

“Yah, mon. I’m sure,” he says, prompting the same argument over and over again each morning, in which my boys root for a boy and talk about why it’s time for our family to have another boy. Kira, the only girl on the way to school, talks about why she and Talia “neeeeeeed” another sister.

When Reader’s Digest did a study last year and ranked the politest cities in the world, no one — including the authors of the study — could believe that New York came in first place. New Yorkers held the door open, said thank you, and helped strangers pick up dropped papers more consistently than any other city dwellers in the world.

I am not surprised.

New Yorkers are polite — but they are also big-hearted and interested in the lives of those around them. In a month, though, even I — this city’s biggest fan — will be surprised if New Yorkers have any interest in my howling newborn. Will that taxi driver be so thrilled to see us? Will anyone want to wait in line next to us? I doubt it. That doesn’t diminish my love for the people of this city, though. It just proves that New Yorkers are polite and sensible. After all, having done this a few times before, I’m not so sure that I want to be standing in line with my newborn next month either.

sarasberman@aol.com