After five years of hard work and heartbreak, they welcome a baby girl

THE PARENTS: Ilana Ponce, 43, and Oscar Ponce, 50, of Old City

THE CHILD: Shoshana Eliana, born June 19, 2022

WHEN ILANA KNEW OSCAR WAS THE ONE: They’d just returned from a trip to Israel: a long overnight flight, a predawn landing, and work that day. Ilana was anticipating a night alone in her apartment. Then Oscar knocked on her door.

She knew he was a good sport when the two stood shivering on a Manhattan street corner, waiting for an Uber to take them to a Halloween party, dressed in identical spandex bodysuits printed with skeleton designs — Ilana’s nod to Oscar’s native Mexico and its celebration of Dia de los Muertos.

He even remained upbeat at the party, with Ilana’s friends all chattering in Hebrew, a language Oscar does not speak.

They hailed from different traditions and parts of the world. Ilana, born in Venezuela to Israeli Jewish parents, came to the United States at age 11. Oscar attended Catholic schools in Mexico City and immigrated to the U.S. at 24.

They met at a dinner with mutual friends on the night before Yom Kippur 2017. Ilana mentioned the name of a drink in Spanish, and Oscar noted her accent. “He said, ‘You speak Spanish?’ I said, ‘A little bit.’ He shared his phone number with me and we made plans to go out a few days after.”

That night, Ilana was impressed with his chivalry — he insisted on walking her from Rittenhouse to City Hall, where her car was parked — but she assumed there was a deal-breaker.

After their first official date, a play in New York, she said, “I know you’re much younger than me. I don’t want to waste your time.” Oscar laughed: “How old do you think I am? I’m actually older than you.”

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They traveled to Israel to meet her relatives and to Mexico to spend Christmas with his. “I realized that our families were very similar,” Oscar says. “Regardless of the culture, or that we come from different countries, I saw that the values and the foundations were the same. I really appreciate how Ilana and her parents are proud of being Jewish. I related to that, because we have to protect the culture that we have.”

In fact, he agreed to convert to Judaism, a process that took several months. Ilana moved into his place around Valentine’s Day of 2018. In July, he proposed on Long Beach Island, with Ilana’s nephew, niece, and brother-in-law as witnesses.

They were married three brisk months later, at Rodeph Shalom synagogue on North Broad Street, with a huppah (wedding canopy), ketubah (marriage contract), a mariachi song, and a Sephardic ritual in which Ilana and her siblings danced around their parents because she was the last to be married.

“I was always very adamant about having children,” Ilana says. “I would go to the end of the world to be able to have a child.”

That metaphor became literal: Over the course of five years, two IUIs, one clinical trial, and eight IVF attempts, they consulted doctors in Philadelphia, New York, and Israel. They had to hit pause on the process when COVID-19 shuttered fertility clinics for nearly six months.

When they resumed, the medicines, blood work, ultrasounds, and monitoring exhausted Ilana. At one point, five of their frozen embryos died in the lab’s freezer. And even though they’d met a doctor in Mexico who was both pragmatic and positive, Ilana wasn’t sure she had the stamina or hope to keep trying.

Last fall, just before the Jewish new year, she planned to go to a mikvah, a ritual bath, and rinse away all the dashed hopes. “I thought, ‘I’m done. If God doesn’t want me to have kids, that’s fine. I’ve tried everything I could. We’ll just enjoy our life.’ ” But one of her doctors here said, “Don’t give up. Go with whatever Mexico is offering you.”

So last September, they traveled to Mexico City once again. Ilana wept on the way to their appointment, fearing what the hospital would be like, but they drove up to a medical complex with a marble entrance and valet parking. This doctor’s medication regimen seemed less punishing, the monitoring more relaxed. Each morning, sunlight poured through their hotel room windows.

“I thought: I have nothing to lose,” Ilana recalls. “After the embryo transfer, they literally put your legs up for three hours and give you a bedpan.” Seven days later, a pregnancy test was unequivocal. They remained in Mexico for another two weeks, just to be sure.

Once home, Ilana was euphoric. The pregnancy, she says, was “super-easy. I felt wonderful. I felt better pregnant than not-pregnant.” She archived all the ultrasound photos and planned a baby-naming ceremony.

The night before Father’s Day, after dinner out, Ilana was standing by their bed. “Are you OK?” Oscar asked. “I just feel weird,” was her answer.

Minutes later, she realized her water had broken. By midnight, they were at Lankenau Medical Center, awaiting a C-section scheduled for the following morning. “It was super easy, super fast. They brought me into the OR at 5:30 a.m. and she was out by 6:55.”

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Both lean philosophical now about the long journey to parenthood. “We were looking for Shoshana everywhere,” Oscar says. “It’s so interesting that we had success in Mexico.”

Ilana hopes their daughter will always know how fervently she was wanted. “She’s brought so much life and love and light into our families — new life to both sets of parents.”

They will tell Shoshana about all the doctors who helped along the way, about the leisurely walks they took through Mexico City streets before the transfer, and about the indelible moment of her arrival.

“The sound she made when she started crying was amazing,” Oscar says. “She was really loud. I started talking to her, promising all the right things that I will do for her. I also felt how fragile she was.”

To him, it seemed the baby had descended from somewhere remote, like a space station — ”starting breathing, experiencing gravity. Oh, my God, this is a miracle, after all that we tried, to have this little human in my arms, breathing and looking at me. That was something that I won’t forget.”