With baby comes more love, more responsibility

THE PARENTS: Kate Stabler, 35, and Helyx Chase Scearce Horwitz, 32, of Upper Darby

THE CHILD: Avram (Avi) Russell Stabler Horwitz, born Dec. 21, 2021

HIS NAME: Avram is for Helyx’s great-grandfather, and Russell is a first or middle name shared by Kate’s great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and brother.

The first date began with strawberry-rhubarb pie and ended with Reuben sandwiches. It was June 2012, the day after Helyx’s birthday. Friends had tried to set them up six months earlier, but Kate wasn’t interested in a relationship then.

This time, something sparked. And though their schedules were diametrically opposed — Helyx worked 3:30-11:30 a.m. as a television production assistant, while Kate managed a cafe from 2-10 p.m. — they managed to wedge lunchtime or late-night dates into their weeks.

Both lived in West Philadelphia and shared a passion for social justice, community activism, and excellent food. They moved in together in 2013 and began asking the big questions: “Would you like to have kids? Where do you eventually want to live? What are your long-term plans? … Things you don’t talk to someone about unless you plan on sticking with them for the long haul,” Kate says.

Two years later, Helyx proposed, over a dinner of the same sandwiches they’d relished on their first date. The ring wasn’t exactly a shock — they’d gone together to a woman-owned shop in South Philly to design it, a rose-gold band with sustainably sourced topaz and citrine — but the moment took Kate by surprise.

They married in December 2016 — a small wedding, in Lancaster, with a self-uniting license, two friends facilitating, and a nontraditional ketubah with language they’d composed. “There was a lot about being equal as partners, and about being bigger than the sum of our parts,” Kate says.

Both wanted to be parents. Helyx had taught swimming lessons to children as young as 3, and later worked with teenagers doing media production. Kate always babysat, cared for younger cousins, and watched her friends’ children.

“I did want to see if it was possible for me to carry a child,” she says. They considered using a sperm bank but realized they wanted to know more about any potential donor — his personality, his likes, and dislikes — than any commercial sperm bank would offer.

“We weren’t looking for a parental role, but someone who could know the child and be around in a ‘friend of your parent’ kind of way,” Kate says.

They made a short list, spoke to lawyers, wrote up contracts outlining roles and responsibilities. During the pandemic, they found a notary who would make house calls. And finally, after one false start with a donor who changed his mind, they began making monthly visits to an Airbnb in Lancaster, where their donor lived.

“It was the longest and the shortest time,” Helyx says, until the day Kate called after using an inexpensive drugstore test stick and said, “Get a real pregnancy test, a digital one. There might be something there.”

Helyx came home with four different tests; all concurred. “I just cried,” Kate recalls. “I think it took me a few days, if not a few weeks, to process that it was real.”

Physically, the pregnancy was a smooth ride. But there were emotional peaks and plummets, including periods of anxiety and depression. “I’m very sensitive to hormone changes even in my not-pregnant life,” Kate says. “I had a good support system and mental health care that I’m glad I had access to.”

Meantime, Helyx made lists and patched holes in the walls of the couple’s home, including a place where the primary waste line had ruptured at the start of the pandemic, leaving a giant gap in their dining room.

Kate hungered for information about labor and birth: books, YouTube videos, other women’s stories. “I wanted to hear it, and not the sugarcoated version. I wanted everybody to tell me exactly how they felt, what was hard for them, what was easy.”

After discussions with Kate’s mother, who is a physician, and with their midwife, they decided on a hospital birth at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, which allows independent midwives — the middle ground between a “mainstream hospital birth and a home birth,” Kate says.

She worried about preterm labor, since most babies on both sides of her family had been born early. But their son was resolute; they decided to plan an induction for 41 weeks. The night before the scheduled procedure, Kate began to labor on her own. Sunday morning, Sunday evening, all day Monday: She dilated gradually, and the baby — pretzeled in the womb with legs bent to the side and arms over his head — wasn’t budging.

“Tuesday morning we made the decision that I would have an elective C-section,” she says. “After three days of labor, I was completely exhausted.”

Their son was born, screaming, on the winter solstice. “It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard in my entire life,” Kate says. “After all that work and struggle, he was here and he was perfect — angry to have been budged from his very comfortable apartment, but none the worse for wear.”

Helyx, holding Avi skin-to-skin, watched him get hiccups and make the exact same face Kate makes when she has hiccups. “There I was, almost alone with a baby who was 15 minutes old.”

They had prepared for a typical recovery and an uncomplicated nursing experience. But breastfeeding was difficult; they needed to supplement with formula. “I was recovering from a C-section, basically incapable of doing much of anything,” Kate recalls. “Helyx powered through, round the clock, for a week.”

“I was very much on autopilot,” Helyx says, “trying to figure out what was making him scream so we could all go back to bed.”

Has parenthood changed their lives? “Everything is different now,” says Kate. “Nothing is different; he feels like a natural addition,” says Helyx.

Somehow, both are true. Before, Kate thought she understood the contours of love and responsibility. “Now there’s a child: more love, more knowledge of responsibility and care. Everything is just … bigger now than it used to be.”