For Anne Medrano and Dan Vidal, it wasn’t planned but turned out to be just what they wanted

THE PARENTS: Anne Medrano, 44, and Dan Vidal, 35, of Lafayette Hill

THE CHILDREN: Jackson Virgilio, 11; Mia Grace, born Jan. 16, 2020

HER NAME: Anne liked classic names — they joked that she’d name the baby “Gertrude” if she could — but the name “Mia” kept coming back every time they talked about it.

They chatted for 15 minutes at a networking event for business owners in Mount Airy. They swapped cards — Anne is a massage therapist with Essential Bodywork, and Dan specializes in neurosomatic therapy at his company, Paragon Pain Solutions.

For each, meeting the other was a chance to barter services, make a new friend, add a local colleague to the network.

“Within the first couple of weeks, we both started to feel there was some kind of romantic tension there. We both tried to block it out,” Dan recalls. He’d just ended a relationship and returned to Philadelphia after a three-year stint in Florida for neurosomatic training and work; Anne, meanwhile, was focused on her business and her 10-year-old son.

“As a woman in my 40s with a previous failed relationship and a lot of responsibility on my plate, I’m extremely cautious about who I spend my time with. I’m not quick to jump into anything with anyone.”

So they traded bodywork sessions. They hiked in the Wissahickon. They cooked together — Anne is a graduate of culinary school, and Dan prides himself on his chicken-in-a-pan sauce — and watched movies. They kissed after a Sixers game.

It was Jackson, her son, who raised the question one day: “ ‘Mommy, are you dating someone?’ I said yes. He got really excited and asked, ‘When can I meet him?’ ”

Anne had told Dan about Jackson — his love of pretend-play, light-saber battles, and basketball — and those stories reminded Dan of his own active, goofy childhood. Still, he felt apprehensive. “My ex in Florida also had a child. … You’re always splitting the attention of your partner with their child. It’s tough going into a relationship like that.”

But when Dan came over for dinner and a raucous round of the guessing game Hedbanz, he and Jackson bonded quickly. “The way he warmed up to Dan spoke volumes to me," Anne says.

Even so, she wrestled with whether to move forward. Dan was nearly a decade younger and would probably want children, Anne confided to friends, and she assumed she was past childbearing. “I’d let go of having more kids a couple of years ago. It was a very sad process for me, but a really important one. I hadn’t met another person, and I was just moving on with my life.”

Anne’s pals encouraged her to pursue the relationship and work out the kid question later. But the two never had time to have that conversation.

Last spring, Anne felt a surge of deja-vu sensations: achiness, nausea, anxiety. “A little voice in my head said, ‘Wait, this is very familiar.’ When I told Dan, he nearly passed out. Then we drove to the drugstore. I have never seen a pregnancy test turn so quickly in my life.”

Dan told her, “We’re in this together. I’m here for you.” But privately, he felt apprehensive. They’d been dating for only six months; he’d just introduced Anne to his extended family. He was trying to establish a new business. “For both of us, it was scary at first. We hadn’t planned it. But I think we both had different moments when we realized: Wait. This is what we both wanted.”

For Anne, the anxiety continued until the results of genetic testing returned with an all-clear. “If you start Googling ‘advanced maternal age, pregnancy,’ it’s really scary,” she says. “When the testing came back, I exhaled and said, ‘OK. She’s healthy. I’m healthy. This is actually a really good thing.’ ”

Both families were thrilled. As was Jackson, who had been asking for a sibling ever since he could talk. “He cried out of happiness,” Anne recalls. “He couldn’t wait to tell his friends.”

Gradually, Dan moved into Anne’s house. And the two prepared for a labor and birth that Anne hoped would be different from her experience with Jackson, delivered two weeks late via C-section. She switched from an OB/GYN to a midwife practice; the couple took a birthing class with Blossoming Bellies and another class with a doula in Brooklyn.

Moments after Anne’s 38-week checkup, her water broke. She’d hoped to labor at home through the early stages. But because she wasn’t contracting, her midwife recommended an induction. At Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, she was able to walk around, even with the IV line, “but I was still in a hospital setting, still foreign, with lights and beeps and people coming in and out of the room.”

An epidural allowed her to rest until it was time to push. “I was standing off to the side,” Dan remembers. “All of a sudden, the midwife said, ‘Come over here. You’re going to catch the baby.’ I said, ‘I am?’ I pulled her right out. Her face was all purple, with little chubby cheeks. I remember having this intense emotional moment, crying tears of joy and laughing at the same time.”

After that, parenthood turned less romantic, more real. Jackson loved his infant sister but yearned for the time he used to have with Anne — a loss that pained her, as well. As for Dan, “I didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be. I definitely had moments, when she was crying and nothing seemed to console her and I was panicking, thinking, ‘What are we doing wrong?’ ”

What helped was the steady presence of both grandmothers, who were happy to toss in laundry, wash a sink full of dishes, or hold Mia so Anne could nap or Dan could check emails for work.

Perspective helps, too. For Anne, parenting Mia feels both intensely familiar — the thirst for sleep, the breastfeeding glitches — and brand-new. “I’m not the same person I was 11 years ago. This is a different partner. We’re in a new situation.” What she knows now is how swiftly kids change, how what feels like “forever” is just a sweet, fleeting moment.