Despite the nerves, learning to ‘let go a little bit’

THE PARENTS: Melissa Toughill, 33, and Devin Toughill, 27, of Northeast Philadelphia

THE CHILD: Chloe Grace, born June 27, 2021

DREAMS OF THE FUTURE: Melissa hopes for a mother-daughter relationship as intimate as the one she shares with her own mother; Devin can’t wait to buy matching sneakers and sit down with Chloe to watch an Eagles game.

Physically, Melissa says, her pregnancy was textbook-typical: normal bloodwork, steady fetal growth, unremarkable ultrasounds, including the one that showed she and Devin were having a girl.

Emotionally, those nine months were treacherous terrain.

Melissa, who’s prone to anxiety, worried from the moment the two stopped at Target for a pregnancy test on the way home from their honeymoon. Melissa had been nauseated even before the wedding — at the time, she chalked it up to nerves — and her period was late.

Devin wasn’t surprised. “She told me and I was like: ‘Awesome! Told you!’ ”

Though she felt lucky to conceive without difficulty, Melissa couldn’t stop the questions that ricocheted through her mind: Am I going to be able to be a mom? What if I go into labor in the middle of the night? What if I’m driving? What does a contraction actually feel like? What if the baby’s born in triage?

At night, her sleep was plagued with nightmares about everything that could go wrong. If you’re that anxious, her doctor said, we can schedule an induction at 39 weeks.

Devin’s task was to voice perspective and peace. “I tried to remain calm for [Melissa]. When she was feeling upset that I couldn’t experience the ultrasounds with her, I knew I had a lifetime with [the baby].”

It was Devin’s maturity that impressed Melissa when they met — initially, via a Twitter exchange about a favorite song, “Drunk on a Plane” by Dierks Bentley. When she learned he was just 19, a freshman at Temple University — she was 25 then and working as a teacher — she figured a relationship was out of the question.

But on their first date — terrible food in a campus dining hall and a screening of Divergent, during which Melissa fell asleep — she began to change her mind. “He was very serious about his work, very into his family.” And once Devin graduated as a marketing major and immediately aimed for a career-track job, Melissa was convinced.

“He wanted to grow up fast. We definitely talked about getting engaged and buying a house. I saw how serious he was after graduating from college, and that’s when I knew: This is real.”

On Black Friday 2018, the two had gone to Giant for some groceries; back at Melissa’s apartment, Devin called her into the bedroom: “Come here and look at this.” When she entered the room, he was on one knee, ring in hand. She was so stunned, she backed up into a metal closet door.

“I said, ‘Shut the ... up!’ Then I ran towards him and gave him a hug. I liked that it was just us: no cameras, no one else there.”

A month later, they bought a house — another milestone, because they’d rarely spent more than a weekend living under the same roof. Their routines diverged: Devin liked to tidy up before bed each night and iron a whole week’s wardrobe on Sunday; Melissa was happy to tug a clean shirt from the dryer and leave the bed unmade.

“We had very different ways of doing things,” Devin says, “but we picked up on what each other needed.”

During a 2020 “sweet spot” of the pandemic, before that winter’s surge in cases, the two were married, with 120 guests, at Our Lady of Calvary Church. Melissa remembers the moment when the church doors opened. “I was overwhelmed by the number of people who showed up. I thought: All the prep has been done, I’m walking in, this is really happening, there’s nothing left to plan. Here it is.”

They both wanted a traditional trajectory: first love, then marriage, then … that positive pregnancy test from Target just after their honeymoon. As the date of their scheduled induction drew near, Devin was excited to jump into daily care — ”I hadn’t held a baby in forever” — while Melissa continued to feel nervous about birth and the postpartum period.

Labor, at Holy Redeemer Hospital, lasted 28 hours. “By hour two, I was having searing back pain,” Melissa says. “They said, ‘You don’t have to be a hero.’ I got the epidural right away.” For hours, the baby’s heart rate decelerated with each contraction, and at one point, the beat became undetectable.

“All of a sudden, the lights are on, three doctors and five nurses come in, they flip me onto my knees, all trying to get her heart rate back. It was a long day of managing the contractions.”

But when it was finally time, five rounds of pushing brought Chloe into the world. “She came out, and she had all this hair, and she looked like a little person,” Devin recalls. Melissa kept repeating, “I just had a baby. I’m a mom.”

“I was in awe of the whole thing, honestly,” she says. “It’s ironic, how I was so anxious for nine months, but once I was there, I was very calm and I wasn’t worried.”

Calm and not worried until doctors were unable to stabilize the baby’s oxygen level and she was whisked to the NICU 20 minutes after birth. When Devin and Melissa saw her there at 1 a.m., “It was a very scary feeling — this tiny thing with a mask on, a feeding tube, all these IVs. I’d read all the books about breast-feeding, the golden hour, how they’re going to lay on your chest and find their way to your breast. I’d never thought about her going to the NICU.”

Already, this baby was teaching her parents. Devin describes his daughter’s first cry as “humbling”; Melissa says she’s learning about her own strength … and her vulnerability.

“I have days when I feel like I’m falling apart, like I’m losing who I am. I’ll cry. Then she’ll look at me and smile and I think, I’m doing OK. She’s taught me to be strong. But I’m also learning to accept help and let go a little bit.”