Debra Pickett

And, to this day, I believe our marriage has gotten off to a very healthy start due in no small part to the fact that he does not know how much "we" paid for the cool-looking stainless steel trash can in our kitchen or the high-design recycling bin that goes with it.

Lately, I find myself feeling a little wistful for those last, heady days of independence. Because it's time for us to start buying baby stuff. And, apparently, we are going to have to do this together.

Baby minimalism is very chic

I fancy myself a hip, postmodern mother-to-be. So I'm not getting wrapped up in the marketing-driven hysteria that says there are approximately 7,000 "must have" items for a newborn child's nursery.

My role model in this is my best friend, who, when shopping for her newborn daughter, routinely dismissed certain items as "infantilizing" or "childish." Having a child, she declared, was no reason to throw good taste out the window -- Disney characters simply don't belong on clothes or furniture -- or to start accumulating tons and tons of sparkly plastic junk.

All that notwithstanding, though, there are certain, completely irrational and utterly materialistic "needs" that I'm stuck on. Like buying a beautiful hardwood crib with a matching dresser.

Yes, I know that all the cribs sold in stores meet government safety standards. And that a baby is unlikely to have a strong opinion about room decor. And that a perfectly good used dresser could be bought cheaply and refinished to (almost) match a new crib, saving us hundreds of dollars. But none of that makes any difference to me.

Attempts to discuss this topic generally follow a predictable pattern.

HUSBAND: [Logical point #1]

ME: True.

HUSBAND: [Logical point #2]

ME: Yes, I can see that.

HUSBAND: [Logical point #3]

ME: Right. Absolutely.

HUSBAND: [Logical conclusion, drawn from points 1 - 3]

ME: Hmm, yeah. But I still want the pretty one at the expensive furniture place.

Economics 101

While I don't have a lot of logic to draw upon, I do have several key arguments on my side. First, there's the whole "bearing your child" thing, which does give me a certain moral authority on baby-related topics. Still, I try not to play the pregnancy card too much. It's demeaning.

Instead, I've tried to make an economic case for the fancy crib/dresser purchase. This is always a dangerous tactic when you are an English major married to an MBA, but I find that, sometimes, if I talk fast and throw in enough terms like "sunk cost" and "demand curve," I can make it work. With the baby furniture thing, I begin with the assumption (because, in my experience, the difference between a slightly shaky economic theory and a Nobel Prize is pretty much just the boldness of the assumptions) that we are going to have multiple children. Then, I extend the cost of the furniture over a very long "useful life" and it turns out that it actually pays for itself. Sort of. If you also assume certain key changes in the federal tax code.

If this gambit doesn't work, I'll have to move from argument to negotiation mode. The play here is to reluctantly "give up" something I don't really want in exchange for the crib and dresser set. Unfortunately, we worked together on assembling our list of baby needs and most of the fat, like the Pratesi crib sheets and the Alexander Calder mobile, has already been trimmed. And the wretchedly ugly plastic car seat is a legal requirement.

The baby-industrial complex

When you're expecting a child, there's a whole baby-industrial complex out there just waiting to suck you in, alternately playing on your fears and on your incredible vulnerability to all things cute and tiny. (The little socks! The itty-bitty hats!)

It's deeply insulting, of course, this totally retro idea that, somehow, the brains of pregnant women turn to mush and they lose the ability to, say, look at a price tag or make a rational purchase decision.

But as much as I hate to admit it, there is something to the notion that, in the midst of an experience that represents a fundamental loss of your ability to control even your own body, there is something empowering about being able to buy something beautiful. And lasting. And utterly free of Disney characters and sparkling plasticity.