Feeling their family is finally complete

THE PARENTS: Margo Seifert, 33, and Scott Seifert, 34, of East Passyunk

THE KIDS: Emily (Emmy) Estelle, 2 1/2; Landon James, born June 17, 2022

THEIR NAMES: Margo’s grandmother’s name was Margery, but she called her Emmy, and Estelle was Scott’s paternal great-grandmother. Landon is a family name on Margo’s side, and James, Scott’s middle name, is for an uncle who died at the age of 18.

They’d just walked back to Queen Village after seeing American Sniper, and Margo stopped to brush newly fallen snow off her car. Then she walked into a house filled with flickering candles and rose petals. Scott proffered a ring set with a stone that had belonged to Margo’s grandmother.

“I think you should call your mom,” he said.

Margo did … and heard a phone ring upstairs. Then a dozen relatives — even her twin brother, who’d flown in from Los Angeles — descended to the living room to cheer their engagement.

“I’d never discussed how I wanted to get engaged,” Margo says. “He knew it was important that my family was there.”

They met in college, at Wake Forest in North Carolina, at a party given by a new fraternity that had only recently begun hosting parties with alcohol. “The first thing I thought was: Why is this cool, attractive guy hanging out at this pretty lame fraternity?” Margo recalls.

It was the fall of her sophomore year and Scott’s junior year. During finals, they took a study break together; over winter vacation, he texted her with a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year message.

Their first date — dinner at the River Birch Lodge in Winston-Salem — came in January 2009. “I’m a little more quiet; Margo’s more outgoing,” Scott says. “I hadn’t been able to speak that freely with someone for a long time.”

In many ways, they were opposites: Scott was an econ major, headed for medical school, while Margo studied elementary education. He struggled to reach the minimum word limit on papers, while she wrote voluminous literary essays.

“We balanced really well,” Margo says. “He was one of the first people who really listened, who really wanted to get to know me.”

It felt like a natural next step — after Margo graduated and landed a spot with Teach for America in Philadelphia, where Scott was in medical school — to live together. “It didn’t feel weird at all to say I was 23 and moving in with my significant other,” she says. “It just fell into place and made sense,” Scott agrees.

They were engaged in January 2015 and married the following summer, on a sticky-hot August day in Norwalk, Conn. And though both wanted to have kids, it wasn’t until a family vacation in 2018 — they were on the beach in Turks and Caicos — that they talked seriously about when to do that.

“I think we’re ready to start planning for the future,” Scott said. It took a year or so to conceive — timing that dovetailed perfectly with the third and least punishing year of his residency in pulmonary and critical care.

When Margo showed Scott the pregnancy test — the second, because the first had just a faint line — he felt “surprised and not surprised at the same time. A sense of: Oh, this is real. Nine months from now, my life is going to change.”

For Margo, the change was immediate: constant nausea, along with an exacerbation of her usual nervousness, throughout the first trimester. “Everything went according to plan until we found out, the day before my baby shower in November, that the baby was measuring very small.”

That meant constant monitoring, with frequent doctor’s appointments and non-stress tests. Because the baby was breech, they scheduled a C-section for Jan. 6. On New Year’s Day, Margo texted Scott at work: “My back really, really hurts.” His response: “You’re super-pregnant. You’re probably fine.”

But a few hours later, she texted again: The surges of back pain were five minutes apart. “A colleague could see the dumbfounded look on my face,” Scott recalls, “and said, ‘Your wife is in labor.’ ”

At Pennsylvania Hospital, the plan was to do the C-section sometime that day. “But they checked, and I was 5 centimeters dilated,” Margo says. “The doctor said, ‘We’re doing this in the next half-hour. This baby can’t come down the birth canal.’ ”

Ninety minutes later, Emily emerged — 6 pounds, 7 ounces and perfectly healthy. “I remember feeling overwhelmed that I had created this human, that she was ours … but also: What did we get ourselves into? We’re not prepared for this,” Margo recalls.

Both also remember a slow-growing rather than instantaneous bond with the baby. “At first, they don’t interact with you. They’re this blob you’re taking care of,” Scott says. “As the weeks went on, she opened her eyes, started doing cute things, and you start to fall in love.”

They definitely wanted a second. Conception happened more quickly this time, and again, the timing was propitious; they were in the process of rehabbing a five-bedroom house around the corner from their current home. “We were building this house with him in mind — a family home,” Margo says.

This pregnancy was more exhausting, mostly because they were also chasing a toddler. They made a decision early on to have a planned C-section. “I’m small, and I knew a vaginal birth was likely to end up in a C-section anyway,” Margo says. She scheduled the procedure for the last day of school — a delivery that turned out to be smooth and calm, the opposite of Emily’s dramatic arrival.

They’re more confident this time; they know the hormone spikes and crying jags will pass. Parenthood has also upped their empathy. As a teacher, Margo understands that a child who is just one of 25 kids in her class means the entire world to their parents; as a doctor, Scott thinks about the impact on parents — even if they’re in their 70s — of having an ill son or daughter.

They cherish a photo from the day they brought Landon home. “We all sat on the couch, and I was so grateful that this is my life, that the four of us were finally together,” Margo says. “To come home and feel our family was finally complete.”