After marriage, they both wanted children, sooner rather than later

THE PARENTS: Jillian Borow, 39, and Todd Borow, 50, of Society Hill

THE KIDS: Michael Alexander, 5; Emma Claire, born April 27, 2022

THEIR NAMES: Michael is named for Jillian’s grandparents, Marian, Marvin, and Abraham; for Emma, she simply loved those names, especially the way they jelled into the nickname “Eclaire.”

The first two dates did not go well. Jillian thought Todd was too nice; he thought she was too difficult. They were late for a show they’d planned to see. Besides, she was dating someone else at the time.

But a few months later — it was summer 2014 — Jillian’s perspective had shifted. She’d broken up with the other guy and reached out to Todd: “I’m turning 30, things are changing in my life; want to give it another shot?”

This time, she appreciated his kindness and calm; he loved her sense of humor, their shared affinity for movies and restaurants, and the ease of talking. “The third [date] was the charm,” Todd says. “We got along and never looked back.”

An early milestone was a wedding the two attended in Santa Monica. “That’s the first time we were away together. I had never traveled extensively with a boyfriend, and I hate flying,” Jillian said. It was on that trip that she broached the idea of moving in together.

Jillian knew it was serious when she started saying “I can’t wait to go home” and meant Todd’s house rather than her parents’ home, where she had always lived. But Todd had a private rule that he wouldn’t consider engagement until he had dated someone for a full year, through all four seasons.

They’d been together for 13 months when he proposed, on a wine train in the Napa Valley. “Let’s go see the caboose,” he suggested, so Jillian navigated her way through the moving train on her stacked high heels. On the deck of the train, with a vista of wine country, he dropped to one knee.

“For 10 minutes, it was just me and the ring: a love affair,” Jillian says. “Then he said, ‘Are you going to say yes?’ I said, ‘Yes. Yes!’ There was complimentary champagne, and everyone in the caboose was clapping for us.”

Jillian’s mother used to tell her, “The ocean is the most beautiful thing, after you.” So they wed on the beach in Avalon, with a backdrop of the Atlantic and a ceremony replete with Jewish ritual, including the traditional seven blessings and a moment when the two stood under a raised tallis (prayer shawl) with the rabbi chanting in a deep tenor and seagulls arcing overhead.

Both wanted children — sooner rather than later. They married in September 2016; by February, Jillian was clutching a positive pregnancy test. “It was two minutes of absolute sheer terror, and from there, I was elated,” she recalls.

She loved being pregnant: seeing a grainy image flicker on the ultrasounds; feeling the baby kick and hiccup at night. Because of her high blood pressure, doctors at Jefferson Health-Abington recommended an induction just after 36 weeks.

That took three days: relentless pain, then a epidural, and finally a moment when feeling the baby’s hair made her want to push more. “They said, ‘It’s a boy.’ I remember Todd crying. They put him on my chest, and we sang ‘Baby Mine’ from Dumbo.

“I was in awe of the baby, but also in awe of myself, that I was capable of doing that. I couldn’t believe that I had given birth.”

Both Jillian and Todd are only children; she was certain that she wanted a second. At first, Todd hesitated; then the pandemic made them hit pause on any baby-making plans. But one day last summer, Jillian burst from the bathroom, jumping up and down, shrieking and in tears.

“What’s wrong with Mommy?” Michael asked. “You’re going to be a big brother,” Jillian told him.

This pregnancy was similar to her first, except that the sensations were familiar, not strange. “Everything was easier because I knew what to expect. I loved feeling the baby.” Jillian walked throughout the pregnancy, taking the same amble through Washington Square Park and smiling to the same people as they nodded at her growing belly.

At one point during the pregnancy, Michael startled awake in the middle of the night, opened one eye, and declared, “It better be a girl!” before sinking back into sleep.

They opted to be surprised. Jillian gave birth at Pennsylvania Hospital: another induction, a slightly shorter labor. “The actual active labor was so painful,” she recalls. “There was a whole semicircle of nurses, like a choir, standing around me.

“She shot out. They said, ‘It’s a girl.’ I had this sense of overwhelming fulfillment. I find the whole experience to be such a blessing — just the fact that you can take a sperm and egg and it becomes a person with their own personality and idiosyncrasies and jokes and tastes. I think it’s a miracle.”

Todd always yearned to be a father; that’s why, back in 2014, he scanned the crowd at a gala at the National Museum of American Jewish History, hoping to meet someone who also wanted to marry and raise a Jewish family.

“Now I see my life through my kids’ eyes,” he says. “I always want to make sure they’re happy and having a good time and learning and thriving.”

Jillian struggles to portion her time: “Michael needs me, and then the baby needs me. She cries, and it’s a physical reaction that I get; I actually feel sick. That delegating is hard for me.”

At the same time, she relishes every act of parenting: swim lessons and birthday parties, breast-feeding and diaper-changing. “I didn’t even live before I had kids,” she says. “I feel like everything I did the first 34 years does not compare to one day of waking up and being a mother. It is that fulfilling for me.

“I enjoy being with them and seeing them grow into people and imagining the contributions they’re going to make to the world, seeing the love they have between the two of them. Knowing that one day, when Todd and I aren’t here, they’ll have each other.”