Our lives are different, just like no two people are the same. For a good life, do not compare your marriage to another’s. There will be situations you may never understand. Supporting each other through every situation, knowing that it can truly be different strokes for different folks.
Look at the instance below.
CLEARLY, DIFFERENT STROKES…
Bisi’s pregnancy test came out positive. Angry at herself, she throws the test stick into the bin next to the water system.
“Oh Lord!” she thought. “How careless, this is so stupid, the third mistake in a year. How do I even tell Doctor Akin? How can I be so stupid and careless? Who wants to listen to your excuses this time, Bisi?”
She smears her hands with the wet hourglass-shaped toilet soap she had bought at the same pharmacy where she got the test strip. She turns on the tap and starts to wash her hands carefully.
She struts carefully past the bathroom door, grabbing the hand towel and gently dries the wetness off her soft hands. She dumps the towel on her Italian satin bedsheet and then gently grabs her phone. She dials his number and waits for him to speak, returning her phone to the same bed. She gets her expensive organic hand cream and begins to massage a generous amount into her palms and hands.
“Hello, Bisi,” came his baritone voice.
“Hello, Akin, it’s me again… um… I know you said… I know you have told me…” Bisi stuttered.
“Oh no, Bisi, don’t,” he said as soon as he seemed to have known what she was finding difficult to spit out. You could tell he was disappointed at her difficult announcement.
“Come on, Bisi.”
“I don’t know how it happened, I swear, I can’t even tell my husband… See, I think I’ll be having another D and C, please, urgently,” she said softly, almost like she was going to sob.
“Oh! What do you want me to say to you, my friend? Go, have an ultrasound and see me afterward,” Doctor Akin replied.
Embarrassed at his tone, she began to shake her head.
“Thanks, you are a darling, a true…” She continued to speak, but he had hung up.
He must be as disappointed as Bisi herself was. She cannot afford to have a third child, no. She and Fred have plans for only two kids, and that they already have—two boys, Edward, four, and Edwin, who is five. Moreover, her career is only just picking up. Another pregnancy would be a disaster, she agrees. She can’t imagine herself with a growing, bulging belly, going to work, spitting, throwing up, and getting all sick like she usually would get once she conceived.
“Oh no, no way,” she retorted, anxious to get it over with. “No.”
She gets into her Gucci midnight blue jeans and a fluid, blousy top—something she’d be comfortable in for her ultrasound in a couple of hours.
Nifemi’s Story
Nifemi is sprawled on the sparkling, jet-black tiled floor of her guest room. Anguish, disappointment, and pain are plainly written on her tear-streaked face. It has been seven good years of marital life with her heartthrob, and she’s never been pregnant, not even once in her entire life. Except for one attempt at IVF that failed and shattered her.
This time, she was eight days late, and somehow, surprisingly, she was hopeful again. But like it had always turned out, she wasn’t pregnant. Her monthly flow finally decided to stop playing with her mind and showed up.
She just wore a sanitary towel, came out of the guest toilet, and let her entire weight collapse onto the floor. She cried loudly, she cried painfully. She could feel hopelessness and the fear of what this once again meant to her.
She dialed her husband.
“Akin, I am not pregnant, Akin, I will never have a child. I will never give you children; it’s not going to happen.”
“Take it easy, Nifemi, please. I was about to call you because I saw your missed calls. I was with a patient when you must have called.”
“Why, Akin? Why? I have never had an abortion before, not to talk of one that went wrong. Why won’t God give me just one? Only one. Why, Akin? What did I do to God?” she wept.
“Sweety, don’t say that, please,” he tried.
“Why won’t He let me know what it’s like to feel a baby move in my womb? Feel it kick? Why, Akin? Why won’t God let me know what it’s like to eat for two, to have annoying morning sickness, to complain of aches and nausea? Akin, why?” She began to wail as fresh tears flowed down her supple cheeks.
“Sweety, we will have our own, we will,” he said, his eyes getting misty. He could feel his wife’s pain as she spoke, and it pained him to realize he wasn’t there for her right now.
“No, we won’t, we won’t. I am tired of hoping, getting my hopes all high and crashing down like this. I would never know what it’s like to feel labor pain, to birth a baby and have the doctor hand it over to me. I will never know what it’s like to give you a child, Akin. Why? Why? I only want to have at least one and let people know that I am a woman.”
“You are a woman, sweety. You do not need a child to prove that. Please stop, I beg you, sweety. Let us try IVF again, ba…”
“No, no, I can’t go through that again,” she screamed. Akin was getting worried as he heard her.
Nurse Chichi runs into his office. “Sir, you are needed; it’s an emergency,” she said, running out the same way she came in.
“Please, sweety, I have another call; it’s an emergency. I’ll see if I can get another doctor to handle it, and I’ll come home. Please, I beg you, don’t do this anymore. I will come home soon,” he said, putting his phone in his drawer and heading to the emergency.
As he ran, he remembered Bisi’s call, only this morning. She is pregnant for the third time in a year, and she doesn’t want this baby. He remembers how pregnant women complain to him of aches, pains, nausea, morning sickness, weight gain, and yet his wife wants to know what all of that feels like.
Nifemi wouldn’t mind going through them to have a baby. To her, it’s all well worth it if it meant having her own bundle of joy.
“Different strokes for different folks,” he shook his head, letting the tears flow freely as he ran.