Sticking up for herself and her children

THE PARENTS: Keaira Edwards, 26, and Yusuf Lawthers, 24, of North Philadelphia

THE KIDS: Ayyub Ibn Hashim, 7; Abyan Ibn Hashim, 5; Aazym Romell Ibn Yusuf, born Oct. 12, 2020

ON BEING A STAY-AT-HOME MOM: “This is the first time when I’m just home with the kids. I’m here for everything. I’m not missing any milestones. And I love it.”

The first time Keaira became a mother, she felt as though she’d lost herself. She’d met her husband — a Muslim, like her — at 17, courted for a few months, got married, and was pregnant shortly afterward.

Over the next nine months, her husband vanished for a while; Keaira went to prenatal appointments alone. “I was losing my identity; I started to feel like the relationship wasn’t for me,” she says.

Two months after her son was born, Keaira’s older brother died from leukemia. It was a bleak period: postpartum depression, a breast abscess that had to be drained. But her husband returned and persuaded her to try being a family.

“I grew up in a broken home; my mom was a single mother and my dad was missing in action. I envied people who had a mother and father in their home,” Keaira says. Within a month after reuniting with her husband, she was pregnant again. “I remember taking the test, seeing the line, and sitting on my mom’s bathroom floor, crying.

“It felt like Groundhog Day, like I was just going through the motions. One day I told him I didn’t want to be with him anymore. I called my stepdad, packed up my stuff, and left.”

» READ MORE: Sticking up for herself and her children

By 2019, Keaira had found her groove: She had her own place, her own car, a job in the research department at Jefferson Hospital, energetic days with her kids. “I thought: This is good. I don’t have drama. I’m just living my life.”

But Keaira’s best friend, a woman happily married for 15 years, told her the boys should have a father figure and persuaded her to try a Muslim dating site. “I went there on a whim,” Keaira recalls. Yusuf was the first — and only — man she messaged.

They talked and texted — she was impressed by his religious devotion and family-focused approach to life, and he found the conversation intriguing enough to get past his trepidation about meeting a woman with children — before Yusuf met with Keaira’s brother and stepfather for a face-to-face vetting process.

That was the custom in Keaira’s community: having a “guardian,” typically the woman’s father, assess a prospective suitor’s background and intentions. Yusuf passed the test. The next step was a family dinner at Keaira’s mother’s house, all six of her siblings around the table, a night of home-cooked food, talk, and laughter.

“I definitely was nervous,” Yusuf recalls. “The next day, after that sit-down, we agreed we were going to get married.”

They did — a low-key ritual at a North Philadelphia mosque in June 2019, with plans for a bigger celebration in spring 2020. “A modest wedding gives the couple more blessings for being humble,” Yusuf explains.

He wanted kids. A lot of kids. Maybe 10, he suggested. How about one or two, she countered. Keaira felt wary of another lonely pregnancy, another bout of postpartum depression. She felt ambivalent enough to dismiss some early signs — bloating, breast tenderness — as premenstrual syndrome.

It wasn’t until she tried a batch of drugstore tests that she felt convinced. “The digital tests tell you to wait a minute. But it blinked for two seconds and said, “Pregnant.” She told Yusuf with a scavenger hunt: small plastic containers hidden around the house, each with letters in them that eventually spelled out, “Baby Lawthers coming October 2020.”

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They took the older boys with them to the eight-week ultrasound, then coached them to keep the news a secret, even from their grandmother, for two more weeks.

This pregnancy was more taxing physically — arthritis, backaches, round ligament pain — but more stable emotionally. Keaira worked with a doula, who made home visits with diagrams and reassurance, and she was more assertive than she’d been five years earlier, coaching Yusuf daily about the kind of labor she wanted and the kind of support he could offer.

“I wanted a birth where I had full control over what was happening. I wanted to feel valued and respected. I wanted a quiet setting. I wanted him to pull the baby out.”

An early blood test indicated the baby was a girl, but at the 12-week ultrasound, a tech suggested that the “angle of the dangle” meant a boy. Keaira had already bought girl clothes and told everyone they were expecting a daughter. “The boys were sad; they’d been asking for a baby sister forever.”

At her 40-week checkup at LifeCycle Womancare, Keaira was already 4 centimeters dilated. Also, her blood pressure was high, so the midwife sent her across the street to Bryn Mawr Hospital. “They said I was in active labor,” she says. “I was having contractions every two minutes. This happened with my older boys; I don’t feel the intensity of contractions until I’m close to pushing.”

The doula dropped off a bag with lavender oil and massage balls; Keaira focused on her breathing. When she tried to relax in a shower around 7 p.m., she says, “I felt like I was sitting on a bowling ball. I looked at Yusuf and said, ‘I think something is happening.’ ”

Pain seemed to radiate from her toes to her head. The midwife urged, “Do what you have to do.” Keaira pushed for a minute; the baby was born at 7:34 p.m.

“He was purple,” Yusuf recalls. “The umbilical was wrapped around his neck, but the midwife got it off. Then he made some noise, and I knew everything was cool.”

The early days weren’t easy: Aazym had jaundice, and a tongue-tie, and Keaira needed pelvic floor therapy because her uterus had dropped. But she’s changed since that first teenage pregnancy. “As parents, we are always evolving and growing. My whole philosophy is different. I’m able to say, ‘I don’t want your advice; I’m their parent.’ I stick up for myself because these are my children.”