Treasuring the ‘awesome’ aspects of parenting

THE PARENTS: Kristelle Guardino, 42, and Frank Guardino, 45, of Norristown

THE KIDS: Lanigan Jonah, 7; Fiona Laine, 2; Franco Stone, born Nov. 3, 2022

THEIR NAMES: Lanigan is Frank’s mother’s maiden name. Fiona’s middle name is a nod to Kristelle’s grandmother, Elaine. And Franco blends his dad’s moniker with Kristelle’s mother’s name, Francesca.

The first one was a surprise. They wanted kids — Kristelle hoped for three, while Frank said maybe two — but neither was expecting a positive pregnancy test just three months after their 2014 wedding.

Kristelle was headed for work on the night shift as a labor and delivery nurse, so she asked a doctor to confirm the drugstore test with an ultrasound. She was eight weeks pregnant.

“We were both floored,” she says. The couple was living with Frank’s parents at the time, to save money; they spilled the news fairly quickly, in the kitchen. And while the pregnancy was textbook-smooth — no nausea, not much discomfort — Kristelle’s medical training kept her mind abuzz with rare scenarios, like an umbilical cord prolapse.

“I thought about how I was going to talk my husband through various medical emergencies,” she says.

They met by happenstance, at a restaurant in West Chester; Kristelle recalls Frank texting her on the way home to caution her about an oncoming storm. That was June 26, 2013. Their next date, in Manayunk, was two days later. “We started talking and literally have talked or texted just about every day since,” Kristelle says.

By the following February, they were engaged. In September, they married, a DIY reception at the Duportail House in Chesterbrook, decorated with roses, hydrangeas, candles, and fairy lights. Frank had designed the invitations, and he jumped in with his guitar to play a few numbers with the band.

He was characteristically sanguine throughout the pregnancy. “I try not to speculate or let my mind run away,” he says. “It was all new to us, so I probably didn’t know what to worry about.”

Lanigan’s arrival, after a 41-week induction, was uncomplicated. Still, Kristelle felt stunned at the first-time experience of being a patient: how little control she had, how much she had to relinquish expectations.

Frank recalls puzzling over new parenthood: “How much to feed them, how much sleep they need, what’s wrong if they’re crying. All those things, you eventually figure out, but when you’re going through it, you feel helpless.”

They wanted a sibling for Lanigan and assumed conception would be easy the second time around. But it took almost four years: fertility medications, three miscarriages, and finally an IVF cycle that produced four embryos, just after Kristelle turned 39.

Though the pregnancy test was unequivocal, “it took me a long time to believe that we were actually having another baby,” she says. The next nine months were draining, but the birth — at Einstein Montgomery Medical Center, attended by midwives — was smooth.

For the first two weeks, Lanigan wouldn’t look at his infant sister. But then came a day when Kristelle was photographing Fiona and Lanigan put on a collared shirt so he could be in the pictures, too. “They became best friends,” Kristelle says. “They are a great team.”

They still had two frozen embryos, and they wanted a third child. If the transfer didn’t work, they would stop; Kristelle found the IVF process exhausting and dehumanizing, and she wasn’t keen to try any more cycles.

She tested at home — good news — but still felt tentative for months. This pregnancy was harder. “I was very sick for a long time, and then just physically uncomfortable and cranky.” The birth, her first without an induction, happened quickly.

But the postpartum hours took a turn for the unexpected. Franco’s respirations were rapid, and he spent two weeks in the Einstein NICU. “I’ve sent lots of moms and babies to the NICU, but I never realized what it was like,” Kristelle says. “It’s terrible. You can’t hold your baby. He wasn’t allowed to nurse because he was on a CPAP machine. It was very foreign and unnatural and difficult.”

Franco was home for just a few days when Kristelle texted her husband: “He’s breathing funny.” This time, they took the infant to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was admitted to the NICU for another two weeks.

“They’re so little. It’s awful to see them going through what they have to go through. And you can’t do anything; you just have to wait,” Frank says. They took turns sleeping at the hospital, and Frank’s parents, who live next door, helped with the older kids.

Once Franco was finally discharged from the hospital, the holidays and the start of 2023 were a long blur of illness: Everyone got colds, then all three kids contracted RSV, though Franco, surprisingly, fared the best.

“We avoided family for the holidays because we were nervous. But once we saw Franco get sick and get through it and it wasn’t that bad, we were relieved and could socialize more,” Kristelle says.

Frank says their life with children feels like a “completely different life.” Before kids, he felt passionate about music and art and photography, but what he feels for his children is emotion of a different order entirely. “You don’t really know that type of love until you have kids. You also don’t know that type of anxiety, either.”

“The first thing you learn [from parenthood] is that you’ve got to put yourself second,” Kristelle says. “Also, when you become parents, you realize the awesome aspect of it, watching something you’ve created grow and learn and evolve. I think it’s the coolest thing.”

Sometimes Frank tells friends that becoming exasperated with an infant is like getting mad at the weather. “They’re these little, natural beings. You can’t really get aggravated or frustrated because they’re not doing anything other than being little babies.”

Routines have become near-rituals: a trip to Wegmans with all three kids, or a calm interlude when Franco is on his play mat and the older kids are cavorting around him. Almost every night, Frank grabs his guitar and plays music: heavy on Red Hot Chili Peppers and Weezer, at the moment. Franco just watches. Lanigan and Fiona dance.