She Wants a Baby! (Part 1 of 4)

She Wants a Baby! (Part 1 of 4)

By Steve Watters

I like to think of myself as the voice of reason in my marriage. Although my wife is a hard-charging professional with a master’s degree and Capitol Hill experience, she often loses all rationality and it’s as if she becomes the spokesperson for various emotions and hormones that take over her body.

Now I’m not talking about that certain time of the month, I’m thinking of those emotional flare-ups that occur at random times throughout the month. Often they’re minor—like the ones that happen at the precise second my head hits the pillow at night—

“Did we turn off the oven?”
“ Is the front door locked?”
“ Is that the wind or a burglar?”
Followed by the assignment—“Could you check?”

Then there are the more involved flare-ups that start with questions like, “Should we sell our house to get out of debt?”

This is where I feel most needed as a husband—it’s where I do the magic that my wife often thanks me for the next morning when her emotions have abated. I often see myself operating like one of those negotiators who talk people out of jumping off bridges—using a combination of calm assurances, rationality, and an occasional distraction or two.

This skill saved me a lot of work two years ago. As the air outside grew crisp, a Crate & Barrel catalog arrived in the mail filled with seasonally painted rooms decorated for cold months. Flipping through the pages, my wife’s eyes lit up and she announced, “I want to paint our family room…pumpkin.”

I got to work quickly. “Honey, we just painted our family room sage not too long ago,” I reasoned. “And remember how much work it was to move the furniture and the stereo equipment, tape off the trim, and do all the clean up? You’re just caught up in the emotions of autumn right now. You’ll probably hate looking at pumpkin walls next spring.”

As the tulips poked out of the ground that next April, my wife was reminded of her lapse in judgment and thanked me for not given in to her paint request.

The greatest challenge to my role as negotiator and voice of reason, however, came wrapped in a simple six-word package: “I want to have a baby.”

Steve Watters is a project manager for Focus on the Family. His wife, Candice, is a freelance editor.

She Wants a Baby
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4