Let him do it because it's his baby.
Don't push this job on me because it's your baby, not mine.
This classic show car is his baby.
Hey baby, how are you doing today?
I understand that the speaker used the word baby to describe work in the first and second examples. The 3rd example is confusing me. How can a car be one's work? Please help improve my understanding.
I know the slang word baby means "a woman who is young", as in the last example, someone is talking to a woman/girl.
Answer
You've slightly misinterpreted the word baby in your first three examples. It means something in which one has invested time, interest, and emotion and for which one has a proprietary feeling. Speaking hyperbolically, it's as though the object of interest is like one's own child.
I thought I should add an example of the usage that didn't involve work- or job-related situations. This turned out not to be as easy as I thought. There's even a canonical political cartoon, showing Hoover turning over the problems of the Depression to Roosevelt in 1933, captioned "It's his 'baby' now":
But I finally found a story about a man who as a hobby, salvaged his car that had been in an accident, replacing the metal body with one made entirely of wood. From that story:
So, he started salvage [sic] spruce wood from construction sites, adding up
bit-by-bit to his truck every evening after work for about nine
months. So you can say it’s his baby now.
A labor of love, with a play on the nine-month "gestation" period for the "baby."
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