Dear Agatha,
I am in need of your help. I am married with two children. My husband and I planned to have three children before he fell sick several years ago. What do I do as I am worried?
Mrs. I.O.
Dear Mrs. I.O.,
Your duty as his wife is to give him all the support he deserves to get back on his feet, not worry him about your earlier agreement to have three children.
Life doesn't always give us what we want. While it is within our jurisdiction to plan, it is the sole prerogative of God to give as He pleases. His plans are never wrong for us; they are always tailor-made to meet our capability.
While you have every right to be disappointed at your inability to execute your own plans with your husband, the fact remains that God never makes a mistake with his plans for us because He only sees and knows the end from the beginning. He has given you the number of children you, with or without your husband, can cater for at least for now.
With your husband's health the way he is, you doubtless carry more the responsibility at home. Even if he is extremely rich, what about the emotional investment involved in the training of children? Childcare goes beyond being able to send them to school or providing for their basic needs. It requires offering them the right emotional balance to make them whole. Most children who lack the emotional attention of their parents end up on the wrong side of the lane despite the material comfort of their homes. A lot of the dregs of the society you see today didn't begin their lives as urchins or 'area boys' and girls. They ended up being what they are today due to lack of emotional support from their parents, who either don't have time or can't cope with the number of children they have produced.
Before asking for more children, do you have the emotional balance to cope with an ailing husband as well as nursing a new child? Tending a sick person and nursing a baby doesn't go together for the simple reason that both require tremendous attention to get them going. Your husband would always need you to be there for him, to ensure he is comfortable, to give him love and encouragement to continue to live as well as the assurances that inspite of his condition, you are still loyal to the vows you entered into with him.
Candidly, pregnancy and a neo-natal in the bargain would give you little or no time to tend to your husband. Don't forget babies are attention seekers; actually demand to at the centre of their mother's universe. A baby would drain you of whatever energy you have to care for your husband, to give him the best of yourself at a time he needs you the most.
For now, a baby would only leave a huge gulf between you and your man on his sick bed. Your husband's health may not be able to cope with not having your full attention. If you are honest you know from experience how hard it is for women to still give the best of themselves to their husbands once a baby appears on the scene. Most women simply transfer the attention and affection they have for their husbands to their babies. Many problems couples have with their marriages emanate from this neglect because the abandoned man either begins to suspect his wife of having an affair or goes into the waiting and affectionate arms of a woman who would appreciate him.
Marriage isn't all about making babies. It goes beyond that. It is essentially about companionship. While couples can be happy together without having a child, no couple can remain together even if they have all the children in the world without the right companionship. This is the right time for you to give your husband the right companionship by using the opportunity offered by his sickness to reorganise your relationship. I am sure there are certain aspects of your relationship you wished you had more time to work on. His sickness may be a blessing in disguise to give you both ample time to work out your differences, celebrate your uniqueness as a couple as well as redefining your relationship.
We all need time to make us better. Look at him, what do you see? Do you see regret at marrying him or joy at the rare opportunity of having this time out with him? If joy is what you see, not having more children wouldn't bother you because in him, you see your fulfilment as a woman; you can only worry about not having more children if you regret the decision to marry him and is therefore looking at the children as a form of compensation.
If you are really happy with him and appreciate the God you serve, you should count yourself lucky that you had two children before he became sick. If you are this worried that you have two children instead of the three you agreed on before his health deteriorated; what would you have done if he were unable to give you any child? Abandon him to his fate or have children outside your marriage?
Sincerely, I don't understand the reason for your worry. It isn't as if you are barren or to blame for your husband's health condition.
Your worry is misplaced. As a woman whose husband isn't in the best of health, your concern should be for him to get back on his feet to give you the support to train the children the way they should be trained.
Your duty to him transcends giving him more children. You should be praying for him, asking for help regarding a cure for his sickness, giving him all the encouragement to be happy so as not to fall into depression. The danger of your worry is that you would be unable to pray for him, give him all the encouragement he needs to be happy; invest in his emotional stability as his wife. Worry depreciates the ability of a person to think rationally. If you are not careful, you risk making a costly mistake that would destroy your marriage.
To be truthful, he doesn't need you to remind him of his condition. This is the time for you to be unconditional in giving to him. It is called sacrifice for the sake of the overall well being of the home.
He hasn't said, he doesn't want to get you pregnant but his condition, something he didn't plan for and which has left him half of his former self, is limiting him from performing his role as your husband. What then do you intend to achieve by reminding him of the agreement you both went into when he was hale and hearty? Do you want to tell him he is incapable of satisfying you? In his shoes how would you feel if instead of concentrating effort on ensuring you regain your health, he is busy worrying about your inability to give him more children? What would you think of him? What if he gives you the child and dies? Of what use would that be to you?
Be careful, you don't give him the impression that you don't care about his health or his well being. It would be so fatal an impression because not only would he lose complete interest in you but begin to suspect your motive of marrying him as well as the spiritual angle to his state of health.
This is Africa where spiritual interpretation is always given to anything. To be truthful with you, if you carry this agitation for a baby too far at this point in time, you risk being pointed to as a suspect in his present condition.
Even if you think he would not survive this sickness, common sense requires you still give him all your loyalty and optimism for his recovery. Since he is a part of you, your faith could heal him completely if you pray him into it.
Good luck.
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