In nine months time, we will come to carry your baby.
This is a familiar prayer point at wedding ceremonies. It’s a product of a culture that idolizes having a child almost to a fault.
Yes, children are a pleasure to have – especially if their arrival didn’t rob you of your ability to keep your own life on the path of growth. There’s also a special feeling that comes with seeing another life that is in your image and likeness – an amalgam of you and your beloved wife; a physical reproduction of the inseperability of your lives.
To that extent, I’ll surely like to have my own children too. My identical twin girls (that’ll be yellow like their mother) and their elder brother that will be dark like me. ?? But who told you I want them to come in the next nine months? That suggests I should plan to impregnate my wife on the night of our wedding. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Did I marry my wife because of a child? Capital No. I married her for myself first. Our marriage’s validity doesn’t depend on child birth either. She’s mine forever and I’m hers, whether she gives birth or not.
The African mindset says, “it is a child that establishes you in your husband’s house.” That doesn’t apply to my own home – a Christ centered, Bible following home. My wife is as rooted as anything in my house even now, without a child. And what roots her down is the word of God. That’s her security. Child or no child, I can’t put her away because God says I can’t! What other security does anyone need?
Bible apart, even me, I won’t put her away for having no child. She’s more to me than many children! It is her that is called alongside to help my calling and destiny. Without her I am not complete. The Bible doesn’t call any child my helper. And none of them is my missing rib. Only her is so called. They’ll come and go their own way after a few years.
None of them will agree to stay in my house permanently either. Only my wife has agreed so to do. Only her has promised to go wherever I go, share my life with me for better or for worse, die wherever I die and be buried where I am buried. No child can make that kind of commitment to me. They have their own life, calling and destiny that may have no connection at all with mine. In the final analysis therefore, no child can compare in worth to me as much as my wife. And as long as I have my wife, I have all I need to be fruitful in the work of God, and to fulfill my calling, even if I don’t have a child!
Anyway, they prayed the same prayer on our wedding day: “nine months time, we will come and carry your baby.” I was saying Amen only for the Cameras. I knew nothing like that will happen because I was going to stop it from happening.
Through those long torturous years of keeping myself sexually pure, I saw my mates cruising women all over town and campus; cohabiting, lodging together in hotels, going out for night parties. Etc. Of course it was attractive to me – at least to the emotional side of me- except that what they were doing was sinful and as a child of God, I couldn’t do same.
My consolation therefore was, “when I marry, I would catch up with all I’ve missed. I would have missed nothing in the final analysis.” So I said back then, the first two years of my marriage would be for doing boyfriend and girlfriend with my wife, just to catch up with all I’ve missed so that in the end, I can really have a sense that I missed nothing by not doing all those rubbish in my single days.
BUT YOU CAN STILL DO THAT AFTER YOUR FIRST CHILD
Sorry, things won’t be the same again by then. Things that were standing firm may already be hanging down. A slim body may have already become fatty. A tight “down-below” would have become very wide and roomy! That stage is inevitable but at least let’s take it step by step. Why should I give up my own maximum enjoyment and fulfilment because of another human being? What’s so urgent about this child thing that we should suspend our own lives because of it? Are we running away? Shouldn’t everything about this marriage be phase by phase?
I’m the one that married a wife, paid for a long engagement list, prostrated like fifteen times and danced like tomorrow will not come during the wedding, sweating like Christmas goat inside a three piece suit. Why should someone else come to start eating the fruit of my labour when I the labourer have not first had at least a little fill?
The ladies my mates were cruising back then were not “after-one.” They were fresh beauties, smooth faces (not swollen faces), smart women. That’s the kind of woman I first want to enjoy, cohabit with, lodge in an hotel with and attend parties with. I don’t know if that’s too much to ask.
After this long wait, how can I marry my wife and then in less than four weeks she’s already throwing up all over the house, admitted in the hospital, having morning sickness, sleeping all day long. Preach that message to the guy who has never kept himself pure, not me. For many, part of the side effect of their pregnancy was nauseation and the nauseation could include not wanting their husbands to even kiss them, not to talk of sex. It was nauseating. The marriage has not even started, you’ve already lost your bride.
In reality, this was the genesis of the sexual crisis in many homes. The thirst was still so deep when the wife was no longer available. They pursued pregnancy too early, as if that was the essence of their marriage. The two bodies had not been properly synchronised into the same frequency when someone became already too sick to master and be mastered.
One and a half years after, after the delivery, they are still yet to understand each other’s body. They then say to themselves, “we can start synchronising these bodies now.” But unfortunately at this time, her attention is divided and her libido is near dead; part of the effect of child birth for many women.
Now they have to keep patching things up. Wrong patterns have already been forged and difficult to break. No wonder the man is reacting; why he feels his child has stolen his wife from him. This is because he never had at least his own minimum fill before the whole attention became focused on the child. He hears her speak about six months exclusive breastfeeding. He is wondering if he the real owner had first been treated to such a first class experience.
Why not first have your own minimum fill so that when you invite others to the feast, you can do it with joy and without reactions? Why not first understand each other’s body and exactly how to bring it to maximum pleasure? Why not first lay a solid foundation; a healthy sexual culture, a positive pattern, before bringing in the challenging distractions? Why put the cart before the horse?
Foundation matters in the success of every building. The challenge with foundation usually is that if it is hastily or wrongly done, to correct it sometimes you need to bring down the whole building. Costly, difficult, sometimes impossible.
Nothing compares to the wisdom of a solid sexual foundation in matrimony. Nothing compares to the fulfilment of a minimum fill for the two of you, before the hustles and bustles of life! It is when we are fulfilled in ourselves that the children can enjoy the best of us when they finally arrive. Or else, we’ll just be transferring aggression, punishing innocent people who committed no wrong.
Your brother,
Peniela E. Akintujoye.
©️Peniela Eniayo, Akintujoye| hello@lovestraighttalks.com
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