Treasuring the togetherness

THE PARENTS: Elana Weinblatt, 31, and Daniel Weinblatt, 30, of Bala Cynwyd

THE CHILD: Adina Dory, born Jan. 18, 2022

HER NAME: She’s named — in a fashion — for Elana’s paternal grandmother, Ida (the first three letters of Adina are Ida, backward), and for Daniel’s maternal grandmother, Dolly.

His text said, “Do you want to meet for lunch one day?”

Her reply: “How about dinner?”

Elana wasn’t trying to notch up the date’s seriousness; it’s just that she didn’t typically take lunch breaks from her summer internship. So dinner it was, at Hummus Grill in University City, before the two rode the train back to their parents’ Main Line homes.

They were 20, and they’d known each other for nine years, since both were shy, carsick-prone kids at Camp Ramah. Later, both worked there as counselors, but it wasn’t until the summer between their sophomore and junior years of college that they reconnected.

“It was just really comfortable,” Elana says. “We became really good friends.” Daniel liked her sense of humor, and the fact that she didn’t roll her eyes — at least not all the time — at his jokes.

They continued dating medium-distance — Philadelphia to the University of Maryland, where Elana was a student — through college; they became “official” in January of their junior year, when both changed their Facebook status to “in a relationship.”

Shortly after graduation, they moved to an apartment in Center City. Daniel’s cat became their cat, and they grew accustomed to each other’s quirks: Elana’s habit of pranking Daniel by putting tennis balls in his pillowcase; his insistence that a freshly showered person should not slip into a bed with unwashed sheets.

In September 2014, Daniel suggested a trip to Linvilla Orchards, the site of their third date. His idea was to have Linvilla staff (who were in on the ruse) direct them to a particular row of trees, where both their mothers would be hiding. Then he would pluck an apple, add a heart-shaped Post-it Note that said, “Will you marry me?” and hand it to a stunned Elana.

What actually happened was that she peered into the allée of trees and saw her mother standing behind one, camera held aloft. “I changed my plan; I did the apple thing, but it didn’t really make sense,” Daniel says. “I got down on one knee and proposed.”

They married two years later, a ceremony officiated by the rabbi who also directs Camp Ramah. Their mothers had worked together to quilt their chuppah in shades of purple, green, and blue, and Daniel’s sisters designed and painted their ketubah. His grandfather, who was in frail health, attended via an iPad slung around an uncle’s neck throughout the wedding.

To both, children felt like an essential but remote part of their futures. Elana was in law school when they married, and Daniel was about to begin medical school. The pandemic put another delay on baby-making.

“We were very nervous about getting pregnant until we were both vaccinated,” Daniel says. Elana did become pregnant in fall 2020, then miscarried at 11 weeks; after that, they waited until spring to try again.

Last May, she stared at a positive pregnancy test, but didn’t quite believe it. She had missed periods but kept testing negative, and was about to see her doctor. “I genuinely didn’t think I was pregnant. It seemed too easy,” she says.

The next nine months were anything but easy: Elana was constantly nauseated, could stomach only Eggo waffles, mac and cheese, and saltines, and lost 15 pounds in her first trimester.

“With the pandemic, I completely isolated,” she says. “I haven’t been to work, to my office, in two years. I was very worried about getting COVID while pregnant, about what that would mean.”

She also worried about labor and delivery. As someone who had always recoiled from needles and medical procedures in general, she forced herself to watch birth videos as a desensitization program.

Elana figured that Daniel’s medical training would make him a confident birth partner. In truth, he was terrified. What if she went into labor at home and he had to deliver their daughter himself? What if something unexpected happened?

“I was able to help boost Elana’s confidence by saying, ‘You’re a very strong-willed person.’ I knew she could do it and kept telling her that.”

Elana was 38 weeks and five days along when her water broke at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. At Lankenau Medical Center, doctors noted she was already 4 centimeters dilated. “They said, ‘You’re pretty far along. Have you been laboring at home?’ I thought: Ohhh. That’s what that was. I’d expected it to be a lot worse,” Elana says.

She’d had slightly elevated blood pressure at some of her prenatal appointments, but now her pressure spiked — a severe case of preeclampsia requiring a magnesium drip. The baby’s skin was bluish when she was born, and someone called for an airway box.

Daniel wasn’t an obstetrics resident — he’s preparing for a career in internal medicine — but he knew what that meant. “My heart sank; I knew something was wrong, but Elana didn’t. Do I tell her? I didn’t want to freak her out.

“At one point, the neonatologist called me to the warming table. She was starting to get more pink. When they said, ‘She’s breathing on her own,’ I exhaled a little bit.”

At home — it was snowing outside, and so much more peaceful than in the hospital — they wondered at first if their sleepy newborn would ever cry. “Fast-forward,” Elana says. “Yes. A lot.”

It helped to take turns with nighttime wake-ups, and to laugh when they put the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cabinet, or when a sleep-shot Daniel went to buy potato chips and couldn’t recall the word for “Ruffles,” stammering instead, “I want the raffles … I mean, the riffles.”

“Parenthood has changed my perspective on a lot of things,” he says. “The biggest is how lucky we are. … Having gone through the miscarriage and hearing about other people who’ve had losses, it makes me appreciate Adina and every moment we have with her.”