Skip to content
Life
Link copied to clipboard

For Gabrielle and Will Rivera, the kids come first

“I wasn’t wearing my mask, so she could see my face.” Time seemed to stop. They stared: “Hi. I’m Mama.”

Will and Gabrielle with Liam and baby Emma.
Will and Gabrielle with Liam and baby Emma.Read moreCarolyn Clement Photography

THE PARENTS: Gabrielle Handler-Rivera, 31, and Will Rivera, 32, of Andorra

THE KIDS: William (Liam), 3; Emma June, born Jan. 8, 2021

A POST-PANDEMIC PLAN: To celebrate their five-year anniversary with a traditional ceremony — ”I always wanted to walk down the aisle with my dad,” Gabrielle says — and a blow-out party with a DJ

It was the season opener of 2016, the Eagles playing the Cleveland Browns, when Will asked a stranger to hold his phone, then dropped to one knee, right there in the stands, and told Gabrielle there was no one he’d rather be with for the rest of his life.

Two months later, after a surprise pregnancy and a traumatic miscarriage, the two cemented their partnership with a quiet ceremony at City Hall.

The tumult and sorrow of those two months had brought them closer, Gabrielle says. “I knew: This is somebody who will be there for me, even in the worst times.”

They didn’t dress up for the wedding; they went shopping afterward. They told their parents after the fact. “It was a huge shock to our families,” Gabrielle says. “They were surprised. By the whole thing.”

But for the two, who met through mutual friends, then re-met at a Fishtown bar, their pairing was no shock. “It was love at first sight,” says Gabrielle. “I kind of knew he was my person.”

Will, who had tracked Gabrielle on Instagram so he could show up at the Fishtown tavern where she was headed, remembers how much she laughed at his jokes. “She was polite. Really caring. And a good listener.”

They complement each other: Will is the people person who makes appointments and delivers the news, good or troubling, to family members. Gabrielle manages the bills and their digital lives. “She’s the yin to my yang,” Will says.

After the miscarriage and the wedding, “I was ready to start a family and keep moving forward,” Gabrielle says. Will, who was changing his younger siblings’ diapers by the age of 9, always figured he’d be a father.

By April 2017, a few months after the two took a spontaneous trip to Puerto Rico, Gabrielle was pregnant. She craved salty foods, especially macaroni and cheese, and had plenty of energy for daytime work at Moore College of Art and night classes in web design.

She began attending yoga sessions and a new moms’ group. “Being able to reach out to those moms, having that community for advice about being pregnant, was helpful,” she says.

Liam arrived a week early — a labor that began in the morning and ramped up to excruciating back pain because of the baby’s position. At Abington Hospital, Gabrielle asked for an epidural. “All I could think about was my breathing. I was very quiet. Methodical,” she recalls. Will, who worried about having a weak stomach, tried to avoid looking at anything but Gabrielle’s face.

“I was there for moral support, telling her everything would be all right.”

Once Liam arrived — 5 pounds, 15 ounces, with a strong resemblance to Will — Gabrielle was stunned by the constancy of infant care: feed, change, sleep, wake, repeat, for day after depleted day.

Still, they wanted another, a sibling for Liam, ideally three years apart. The pandemic came, with a lockdown that turned out to have its sweet side: “All the family time,” Gabrielle says. “We would go on walks, we played, tried cooking some more, had movie nights.” By May, she was pregnant.

COVID-19 altered everything about the experience. No massages this time; no lunches with empathetic friends. No in-person moms’ group. Prenatal appointments via telehealth. A virtual gender reveal in which they sliced into a cake — they captured the moment on video and posted it to Instagram — secretly baked in pink by a friend.

They bought Liam a doll and dressed it in girl’s clothes. “Where is Baby Emma?” they’d ask, and he’d answer, “In Mama’s belly.” They chose a name that honored Will’s grandmother, Emo-Gene, and Gabrielle’s grandmother, June; both died in 2017.

Gabrielle hoped for a natural birth, and she chose Einstein Medical Center Montgomery because she’d heard good things about the midwives there. But this labor mimicked her earlier one — morning contractions that quickly became painful back labor, plus the additional hardship of having to wear a mask.

“I wanted to be able to walk around and shower and be on all fours, but it was exactly the same as Liam’s birth,” Gabrielle says. This time, though, she pushed for only 20 minutes.

“She was a trouper,” Will says. “I was just holding her hand through contractions.”

The baby came out crying, Gabrielle recalls, but grew quiet the moment she lay on her mother’s chest. It was 3 o’clock in the morning. “I wasn’t wearing my mask, so she could see my face.” Time seemed to stop. They stared: “Hi. I’m Mama.”

Now they face the challenges of parenting an infant and a toddler. It takes teamwork, Will says — with him often being the go-to parent for Liam while Gabrielle tends to Emma. Will aims to be present for his kids; his own father left when Will was 5, and he wants to do better. Gabrielle knows that her children’s needs will always top the agenda.

“The main objective of a parent is to keep your kids out of harm,” Will says, and both know that’s not easy during a time of hostility — especially toward people of color — in the wider world.

“There’s so much hatred and stupidity,” Gabrielle says. “I was watching the news when I was going through contractions, what people had done at the Capitol. It’s terrifying.”

They moved to the outskirts of the city in search of more peace, and they may move further. Meantime, the days are filled with Pampers, wipe warmers, and naps, a toddler’s frustration when Gabrielle says, “No, I can’t pick you up right now,” and his allegiance, already, to his infant sister.

“Yesterday, Liam came home and brought a doughnut upstairs and wanted to hold Emma,” Gabrielle recalls. She set him up with a Boppy pillow and the baby. “Do you want to go play?” she asked after a few minutes. “No,” he said contentedly. “I hold it. I hold it.”