Judging from some romance novels, a baby is considered a suitable happy ending to a love story. Often, courtesy of epilogues, the couple is blessed with two, three, four, or even five children under the apparent assumption that if one baby cements your love, then five must turn it to tungsten steel.

Given that I have two young kids of my own, and given that the advertisers, at least, seem to believe there are a lot of us young mothers in the viewing audience, this gets down to the murky waters of Why We Watch: escapism? or validation of our life choices? When it comes to romance, I’m firmly on the side of escapism. When I read a book where the couple is given five kids in the epilogue, it just makes me imagine how exhausted they must be.

I can’t think of a single baby story, pregnancy story, WTD story, adoption story, or abandoned kid story that I’ve loved in all of Days history. I would never “sign in, please!” to a baby fan thread on the Other Board. I am neither patiently nor impatiently awaiting Baby Boy Johnson. But, so far, I am not hating the Steve and Kayla baby story.

I really enjoyed the scenes today (1/9). Instead of talking about babies, and nothing but babies, for the entire episode, there was a nice mix of baby talk, best friend talk with Hope, DiMera talk, and talk about Stephanie. Both Steve and Kayla interacted with other members of the cast. l love the dynamic between Steve, Kayla, Bo, and Hope, and it was definitely on fine display today.

I adore Mary Beth Evans. What other actress would look so comfortable discussing her age and being “over the hill”? Can you imagine Dierdre Hall, or even Kristian Alphonso, saying what Kayla did today? (Marlena need have no worries about issues of fertility or infertility, since her entire body has been replaced with a Silly Putty-like substance.)

And then there’s this little piece of dialogue, which speaks for itself:

Kayla: That was fast.
Steve: I just thought about you.

I’ve said before that I’d like Steve and Stephanie’s relationship to be explored, and today was a good example of examining the distance between them without creating artificial conflict. Steve and Kayla both respecting Stephanie’s confidences serves as a nice contrast to Hope, who can’t discuss her daughter-in-law’s problems enough.

That brings me, in fact, to another point. Other people not in favor of the baby story have cited Bo and Hope’s current role on the show as the one they’d like for Steve and Kayla. I love the idea of going on mini-adventures related to various mysteries on the show, but I do not envy them the episode-long conversations about nothing but Belle, Belle, Belle. I would not like to see Steve or Kayla have quite that level of interest in anyone else’s love life.

And what’s our other option? John and Marlena’s story? (By the way—hey there, John! Only Salem dead, after all, huh?) When John first made his appearance yesterday as a re-brainwashed DiMera pawn, I admit it, I felt some envy. Are John and Marlena going to get a better executed version of the story Steve and Kayla should have had last spring? The one where the pawn was involved in lots of twisty nefarious doings, the woman was wily and strong, and true love triumphed at the crucial moment? But perhaps there’s no reason to expect that this story will be any different from Days’ standard MO: intriguing setup, followed by a series of confusing, zigzaggy plot points, wrapped up with a flaccid resolution. I hardly know what to hope for.

So … I’ll hold out hope that Steve really will help out Roman and Bo by breaking into the storefront, or another similar adventure (if Kayla insists on coming along, so much the better). I’ll hope that we get more baby making scenes, where the emphasis is on the making, not the baby. I’ll hope that both Steve and Kayla will still be well-integrated with the rest of the canvas. And I’ll hope that the baby, if or when it arrives, will be shuttled off to the Brady attic as easily as Ciara has been.