AUTHOR: Sara TITLE: Babies 'R Not Us DATE: 2/26/2005 07:23:00 PM ----- BODY:

Today was the first day my husband has ever been to infertile hell. Mike braved the borders of my very heartache and walked through the magical doors into . . . Babies 'R Us, or as I like to call it . . . . Babies 'R Not Us. I was a little pissed that I had to even go back to the damn store again, but my SIL (Mike's brother's wife) and my friend J are both ready to have their girls. As I was waiting for the registry lists to print, I was cursing myself for not just ordering online and having it shipped. The thing is, I like to wrap gifts. It's a knack, I think. I should be like Will and Grace and have a gift-wrapping room in our house. Here's how our trip went: Mike must have sensed my discomfort with being there, so he tried to make me laugh and loudly said, "Well, I guess this isn't the place to pick up chicks, huh babe?" I just stared at him, gritted my teeth, and asked him to go get a small basket. Mike comes back with a shopping cart. Now, it wasn't the regular grocery-store kind of shopping cart, he brought back the one with the huge, built-in baby-carrier. The teacher in me came out and I just stared at him and then the cart and then back at him. (It works well with 4th graders.) He looked at the ground, nodded, and then took it back and fetched a small, I'm-not-really-shopping-for-myself-because-I-don't-have-children kind of hand-held basket. Much better. As I scanned the lists and began slowing putting items in the basket, I turned around to see that Mike had disappeared. Hmmmm . . . it is not like this is Circuit City and he could have gone to salivate over the new televisions or some other electronic gadget. I shrugged it off and went to wrap up my shopping in the DVD section, searching for one of the Baby Einstein videos. There Mike was, aimlessly walking around the baby clothes section, stopping for a second to touch an infants outfit with a baseball on it and then looking at the small shoes like he had done at the Nike outlet a few weeks ago. When he caught my eye, he smiled, and I realized for second that I am not the only one in this. I suddenly had this overwhelming sense of guilt and I wondered if I was that careless to not think if this whole desire for a child was making him ache as much as it does me. Let's just say we checked out as fast as we could and as we walked outside, I apologized to him. "Why are you apologizing?" he asked me. I told him that I know it was probably inconsiderate of me to take him there and assume he would be allright with it. I told him I should have dropped him off at the Best Buy down the street. He just shook his head and smiled. "Don't worry. I promise you, Sara, we're going to have a baby. I promise . . . " And on the drive home, as we passed the baseball fields where teeball was going on, he began to happily talk about being our children's coach and if we had a girl, they could still play teeball because it would be a good experience. I realized the only difference between the way he feels and the way I feel is that he has a whole lot more optimism that me. He has a better attitude. It is not Babies 'R Not Us, it is Babies 'R Not Us Right Now, But Will Be One Day. I like that name a lot better.

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