Getting to know their baby

THE PARENTS: Sammy Lifson-Neubardt, 31, and Sam Lifson-Neubardt, 32, of Mount Airy

THE CHILD: Izzy Lifson-Neubardt, born April 10, 2021

THE NAME: Sam and Sammy followed the Jewish custom of naming after beloved, deceased relatives, but they also crash-tested the name by shouting it across the house; they like that “Izzy” is gender-ambiguous.

At their wedding, they smashed the patriarchy.

Stepping on a glass etched with the words “The Patriarchy” was just one way Sammy and Sam inserted humor, creativity, and a shared ambivalence about the institution of marriage into their June 2018 ceremony, held in the backyard of an aunt and uncle’s Bucks County home.

When the officiants — Sam’s sister and her girlfriend — pronounced them legally wed, they also released a puff of smoke. “We made it fun. We made it our own,” Sammy says. “We had talked for a long time about whether or not we wanted to get married or believed in the idea of marriage. We knew we wanted to make a public commitment and stay together … and it became clear that [marriage] is the avenue to do that.”

They’d known each other since middle school, then remained friends in high school and college, but didn’t begin dating until Sammy visited Sam in Boston and boasted about her carefully crafted OkCupid profile: “You should look at it; it’s really good.”

» READ MORE: Bringing a clarity to their lives

Sam logged on — he was also using the site and commiserating with Sammy about the lackluster dates they’d had — and used a projector to beam her profile onto his living room wall.

“It said, ’99% match,’ right there, in huge text,” he says.

Sammy thought, “This guy must check a lot of the boxes that are important to me.”

A few months later, she invited him to take the bus down from Boston and meet her at the Empire State Building; their date segued to Koreatown for bibimbap. “It was kind of strange and awkward because I’d known Sam for a long time as a friend; I didn’t know how to interact, how to be. But Sam came down the following weekend, also. We kept hanging out.”

A year and a half — and many conversations — later, she moved to Boston. It was their mode to talk through possibilities, to seek counsel from friends. “Sam is in software development, so he’s always looking for bugs, for things to worry about. And I’m an extrovert; I love talking things through and figuring things out.”

They went through the same intentional planning process before their marriage, and, later, when they decided to leave Boston. “We put together a decision journal, which sounds so dorky and uncool,” Sam says. But the process helped them land on Philadelphia as a place where they could both afford a house and be part of an activist, racially integrated community.

They lived first in West Philadelphia, then bought a house in Mount Airy. Meantime, they were talking about children: How would a baby change their lives? How might they bring a child into the world of their own interests and politics? “That seemed like a beautiful thing, to share your passions with someone new, to see it as a collaboration,” Sam says.

» READ MORE: What does it mean to ‘mother’ when you’re trans? This man answered with a memoir he wished he’d had.

Sammy took a pregnancy test just before a visit from Sam’s brother in July 2020. But they kept the news to themselves until September, when they drove to White Plains, N.Y., invited their parents and stepparents to a socially distant outdoor lunch, and gave them T-shirts reading, “I’m going to be a grandma/grandpa and all I got was this stupid shirt.”

Sammy and Sam captured the collective shriek on video; this would be the first grandchild for all of them.

She recalls the first trimester as a strange period — knowing she was pregnant but feeling wary to share the news. “I felt like: This is the most interesting thing that’s happened to my body, ever, but I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

They read books, they talked to friends who were already parents; Sammy surprised herself by finding community and advice on Reddit. The pandemic brought some benefits, such as not having to commute; it also meant Sam couldn’t accompany Sammy to prenatal appointments and had to witness the ultrasounds on video.

The two agreed not to find out the baby’s sex.

“When you say you’re pregnant, the first question people ask is, ‘Do you know what you’re having?’ I’d say, ‘A person. A baby,’ ” Sammy says. “I thought: This baby’s going to have a sex and a gender ascribed to them; let’s see how long we can put that off.”

They accumulated heaps of hand-me-downs from neighbors — “girl” clothes, “boy” clothes, and neutral garments — and figured their baby would wear all of them. They used “they/them” pronouns and called their in-utero child “Lumpy.”

The pronouns, Sam says, are shorthand for the values they wanted to impart: an expansive view of gender, a respect for their own and other people’s autonomy, a sense of confidence and self-worth.

» READ MORE: Good partners welcome a new member to the team

The baby was 10 days late. The birth plan — immediate skin-to-skin contact, a delay in cord-cutting, a room quiet enough that Sam’s and Sammy’s voices would be the first the baby heard — dissolved after 20 hours of unmedicated labor at Bryn Mawr Hospital and a stall at 6 centimeters dilation.

With the help of a doula, “we tried some interventions to kick-start that, but it ended in a C-section,” Sammy says. “It ended up being really beautiful and still very empowering, even though it did not go according to plan.”

They recall hearing someone announce the time: 4:42 a.m. They recall bursting into tears. And they remember the moment when someone swaddled the baby — they hadn’t yet decided on a name — and handed the bundle to Sam.

“I put them on their side and was shushing in their ear; they immediately calmed down,” Sam says. “I was making sure I wouldn’t trip with this precious cargo.”

For Sammy, parenthood still has surreal moments. “I can’t quite make it add up: This is the baby that was inside me for so long. … But now I feel like we’re getting to know each other. They’re showing us who they are.”