Taking the next big step

THE PARENTS: Sarah Barry, 28, and Sean Barry, 53, of Mount Airy

THE KIDS: Hudson Finn, 15; Emmeline Mars, born July 16, 2021

HER NAME: Sarah had always liked the name Emmeline, and Mars is a nod to her mother’s name, Marcella. “I liked that it’s a little bit edgier, and gender-neutral,” she says.

There were two empty barstools at the Pub on Passyunk East — the endcap of Sarah and Sean’s first date in 2016 — but they weren’t next to each other.

Sean figured they’d just wait for two side-by-side spots. Sarah had a different idea.

“I said, ‘We’ll just ask these people to move,’ ” she recalls. And she did, to Sean’s astonishment and awe — ”that’s something I would never, ever do” — before the two clambered onto the now-empty stools and talked for hours.

It was the kind of take-charge impulse that caught Sean’s interest from the start, when he was a regular customer (“half-caf Sean,” the baristas called him) and Sarah was a manager at High Point Cafe in Mount Airy.

She was just 23, and she’d somehow managed to buy a house. He was a divorced painting contractor whose apartment, as it turned out, was kitty-corner from her fixer-upper.

“I was impressed with what a go-getter she was,” Sean says. At one point, Sarah texted — a medium Sean was still fumbling to master — and suggested they go dancing. “I thought: Wow, that’s very forward of her. She’s somebody I really wanted to get to know.”

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Sarah was intrigued by their differences: She’s a minimalist, while Sean collects action figures, vinyl records, and vintage audio equipment; she’s a planner, while he prefers to let life unfold.

She wasn’t daunted to learn that Sean had a son, then 9, from a previous marriage — not even when the boy bolted from the dinner table during Sarah’s first visit. “It was a learning curve for everybody involved,” she says. “It’s difficult to have a transition like that, to have somebody new come on the scene.”

Sean had a moment’s pause when he considered the age gap; Sarah’s mother is just two years older than he is, and her younger sister is only two years older than his son. “But as we grow older, our ages kind of meet in the middle. I’m a bit of a man-child, still, and Sarah is like a 45-year-old, a forward-thinker and a great planner.”

With a shared future in mind, they began to renovate Sarah’s house in 2018, converting a garage into a bedroom, rehabbing a bathroom, turning two small bedrooms into one large room for Sean’s son, Hudson.

They were in Cancun for Christmas that year when Sarah got a text alert about the credit card they shared: a large purchase at a jewelry store on Isla Mujeres. Not long after, Sean knelt in the surf just as a party boat was passing; a wave knocked him over, and he nearly lost the ring, which turned out to be much too large for Sarah’s finger.

“I said, ‘Yes. Let’s get married. Did you keep the receipt?’ ”

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They eloped to New Orleans — Sarah’s no fan of extravagant weddings, and the Big Easy is a favorite getaway spot for the pair — with three friends who agreed to a spontaneous midweek trip.

Sarah recalls feeling anxious as they waited in the French Quarter wedding chapel, until Sean began to speak the vows he’d written. Sean wasn’t nervous at all. “I felt very positive about it — somebody who could take the chance with me, with the age difference and a son from a previous relationship, and build a life and a home together.”

Sarah wasn’t sure about having kids. Sean felt certain he wanted another; besides, Hudson had been asking for a sibling for years. “Over time,” Sarah says, “our conversations morphed in the same direction.”

It was Election Day 2020 when Sarah peered at a drugstore test that showed a barely there line: “What is this? Maybe I’m pregnant; maybe it’s a shadow. We were also really unsure about the country: Maybe things are going to change in this small way and this big way … and maybe not.”

A few days later, a second test was unequivocal. Sean took the news in typical low-key fashion. “It marinated for a while; then I was extremely ecstatic.”

Sarah’s family has a history of miscarriages and fetal deaths, so she wanted to tell her parents right away. “If you do have something like that happen, you want the people closest to you to know that you’re sad and to be there to support you.”

» READ MORE: Building, with hope, for the future

But the pregnancy was textbook-typical — except for COVID-19, which meant Sarah attended appointments at Lifecycle WomanCare alone while Sean listened to the baby’s heartbeat via speakerphone.

Sarah opted to know the baby’s sex, but Sean preferred to be surprised; he avoided looking at the infant clothes Sarah stashed away, and they had numerous discussions about names, even though he knew his wife was humoring him with half of the possibilities.

Meantime, Sarah did 300 squats a day and, near the end, ate six dates daily in an effort to bring on labor. It didn’t work. “I was four days late, it was hot, and I was beyond waiting for her to come,” she says. “Every day, people were texting me: Is the baby here yet?”

Her water broke in the middle of the night. “I lay there staring at the ceiling for two hours until my contractions started — really close together, really strong.” At the birth center, Sarah’s mother and Sean each held one of her hands, helping talk her down each time she started to panic.

Emmeline arrived at 11:59 a.m. “I was amazed at the size of the umbilical, and the brightness of it, and that 24 hours before, the baby was inside, and now she was out and part of our lives,” Sean recalls.

Sarah had heard friends describe an overwhelming flush of love or surprise when their babies were born. For her, it was something else. “It felt like the next right thing to happen: You were one inch away, and now you’re here, and that’s really good.”