The Parent Trip: Evelyn and Mark Attas of Drexel Hill

THE PARENTS: Evelyn Attas, 32, and Mark Attas, 37, of Drexel Hill
THE KIDS: Dylan Michael, 7; Lori Renee, 5; Piper Rose, born April 11, 2016
WHAT MADE THE WEDDING UNIQUELY THEIRS: A wedding cake with fondant in a geometric pattern of black, red and white, and no "groom's side" or "bride's side." Everyone mixed.

If there were something worse than being stuck in Schwenksville, an hour from her South Philly cousins, while pregnant and caring for a not-yet-potty-trained toddler as her pharmacist husband worked 12-hour shifts, Evelyn wasn't sure what that particular version of hell might be.

Until she started vomiting blood and suffering brutal surges of back pain.

The local OB thought she was a drug-seeker and offered Tylenol; finally, X-rays revealed gallstones. At 18 weeks pregnant, Evelyn had surgery to remove a gallstone the size of a golf ball; two weeks later, another surgery excised her gall bladder.

And then everything got a little better. Yes, it was still Schwenksville, beyond the reaches of SEPTA. Sure, the smell of coffee sickened her while Oreos beckoned - she could devour a whole bag in two days. And the toddler still wasn't potty-trained. But she found a terrific midwife who supported her sole wish for this second pregnancy: to have a vaginal birth after the cesarean that had brought her first child into the world.

She and Mark met at a CVS in South Philly: he was working in the pharmacy when Evelyn, a former employee, popped in to visit friends. Both were smokers back then; she'd coax him to take a break from work and, between puffs, they discovered shared, eclectic tastes: punk rock, all things Disney, the film Back to the Future.

Evelyn remembers feeling different - more comfortable, more confident - than with other guys she'd dated. And early on, they talked about having five kids. At least, Mark did; as the middle child in a quintet of siblings, that number felt right, even a little magical. Their first date, a 20-hour marathon that included a "very PG" sleepover, was on Jan. 5, 2006, and they were married on the same date two years later.

Six months after their wedding - a Philly-centric event featuring ice sculpted into the LOVE symbol and a Mummers strut - Evelyn texted Mark a photo of a positive pregnancy test.

"Some people get nervous," Mark says, "but I was not nervous. I'd always wanted kids, so I was happy." Evelyn shared his joy, though it was tempered by seven months of daylong morning sickness. She subsisted on Sprite and Cheez-Its, canned minestrone, and soft pretzels.

In the meantime, she crafted a "long, obnoxious birth plan," complete with a playlist - a little Damien Rice, some Foo Fighters, a bit of Dave Matthews Band. Her contractions began the day before her due date, but labor was slow and halting. When the OB mentioned C-section, Evelyn wept.

She recalls a medication-juiced vision of "weird orange mountains" in the operating room, then a woozy blur of baby. But Mark remembers every detail: the short obstetric surgeon who had to stand on a stool; the sound of Dylan's first cry. "It was the most amazing thing to finally have this living baby in my arms," he says.

For Evelyn, the postpartum weeks brought overwhelming loneliness. Mark was in his final year of pharmacy school; most of her friends were still childless. She'd walk Dylan to CVS to visit with former coworkers, then duck out mid-conversation when he started to wail. But the isolation she felt then didn't come close to the period after Lori was born - in a successful VBAC, as she'd hoped - a time Evelyn refers to as "The Black Ages."

"I had a toddler and an infant, and I couldn't even leave to go anywhere. I was miserable and alone." And though Dylan was helpful and sweet with his baby sister, fetching burp cloths or playing by himself, Evelyn found it untenable to nurse Lori and care for a toddler at the same time.

When Lori was nine months old, the family bought a rowhouse in Drexel Hill, closer to Evelyn's parents, friends, and the city blocks she loved. Gradually, they traded diaper bags for little backpacks; Dylan was on his way to first grade, and even Lori was more independent. They were planning to get a dog for Christmas.

Until a pregnancy test from Target tweaked their future in a different direction. Evelyn hid it from Mark for two days, finally fishing the stick from the bedroom closet at 3 o'clock in the morning. "I was apprehensive the whole time she was pregnant," he says. "It was me coming to terms with the fact that this was happening, that we had to do this again."

They told the kids with T-shirts: one for Dylan emblazoned "Big Brother" and one for Lori that said "Big Sister in Training." When Dylan read that aloud, he glanced at his parents in puzzlement, then looked at Evelyn's belly . . . at her face . . . at her belly once more. "Are we having a baby?" he yelped.

This pregnancy was a breeze: no morning sickness, no complications. The night before she went into labor, Evelyn danced at an uncle's wedding, with relatives all crooning to the baby (whom they'd already named), "Come, on, Piper!"

This time, contractions ramped up quickly; Evelyn was six centimeters dilated by the time they arrived at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery. Three pushes, and there she was. "I couldn't believe I did it again," Evelyn says.

For weeks after Piper's birth, Evelyn drove Dylan to school at 8:30 and Lori to pre-K at noon; every three hours, it seemed, she was popping the baby into the car. But at least they're closer to home: to the CVS the older kids recognize as "the place where you and Daddy met," to college-age cousins who babysit.

Maybe there is something to that magic number, after all. Mark wears a hash-mark tattoo - four vertical slashes crossed with a diagonal - and Evelyn sports one with a quintet of element symbols (earth, wind, fire, water, ether). "It was never even a question: Do we want kids?" Mark says. "It was: How many kids do we want? We ended up having a fifth member of the family."

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