The Parent Trip: Elizabet Cepero-Abreu and Jose Marcelino Abreu of Camden

Elizabet took a taxi to Reynosa, Mexico, then walked across the border with $200 in her pocket and a handful of English words in her vocabulary. In Cuba, she'd been a teacher, a daughter, a sister. Here, she dreamed of freedom - for herself and for the child she hoped, someday, to have.

That first year in the United States, at 26, she lived with relatives of her brother-in-law; she acquired a Social Security card and cleaned the machines in an egg-processing plant at night. She cried a lot. And she persisted, getting her teaching certification and other paperwork from Cuba, eventually landing a job as a bilingual teacher in a Camden public school.

She watched television to learn English grammar and slang; she retrieved books from the trash and pored over the unfamiliar words. Along the way, she met and married a Peruvian man who shared a house where she rented the attic rooms.

She was stunned, during a hospital visit after a car accident, to learn she was pregnant. "I was happy because it was my first one," she recalls. But it was a lonely nine months; her husband went to Peru for a long stay, and returned to New Jersey just days before the baby was due.

"I broke my water on Monday, and he was born on Tuesday at 11:14 at night. So I was almost a whole day without water, with pain and by myself." She'll never forget the sound when Christopher emerged via C-section, a solid 9 pounds, 14 ounces. "He didn't scream. It was a cry, but not a scream. A nice cry. That was the best moment of my life."

Then she was alone again - with a box of Pampers, a portable crib, and an infant. Her husband was gone all day, job-hunting; later, he returned to Peru. "Christopher and I have a special connection because his father left when he was a year old." Elizabet paid for the divorce herself.

Those were lean years; at times, the refrigerator held only Christopher's formula and bottles of Coke. But Elizabet loved the intimate days: dressing her baby, nursing and cuddling him, kissing his ink-black hair. "I wanted to be a mother. That was my dream. I wanted to have babies. Just one, or maybe two."

She wasn't interested in marrying again. But in the store across the street from her school, where she bought frijoles y arroz for lunch, a handsome, kind man from the Dominican Republic always seemed to be waiting for her. His name was Jose Marcelino, but everyone called him Marcelino. When she came in after school, Christopher in hand, he bought the boy ice cream and talked to him gently.

"My friends told me, 'You like him,' but I said, 'No, he's too young.' The thing that made me look at him was the way he treated Christopher. That melted my heart. I thought: 'That's the father I want for my son.' "

After months of lunchtime meetings in the bodega, the two started dating. They saw movies, walked in the park, and met one another's friends. Christopher began calling Marcelino "Papi." But Elizabet was wary; she refused to make a commitment until she'd met Marcelino's family. So she flew to the Dominican Republic and made the rounds: Marcelino's mother, his daughters from a previous relationship, even his ex.

Those conversations confirmed her hunch: Marcelino was an honest, solid man. The two were married in October 2012.

Once again, pregnancy came as a surprise. Elizabet was hospitalized with pain from a hernia, and the doctor ordered a urine screen. "When she told me, I said, 'Maybe something's wrong with the test.' But she did a blood test, came back, and said, 'Yes, you are pregnant.' Yo no lo creia. I didn't believe it."

That's when she remembered her older son's murmured prayers each night, the recitation Elizabet only half-heard while bustling around, getting ready for bed. "He was praying, 'Jesus, I want a baby. Please put a baby boy in my mommy's belly.' When we showed him the pregnancy test, we said, 'God answered your prayers.' "

Elizabet and Marcelino - not to mention Christopher - were hoping for a boy. They wanted a "J" name for their son, and Jadiel seemed perfect. It means Dios escucha. "God has heard."

Elizabet was scheduled for a C-section at Cooper Hospital. The birth was trabajoso - difficult - but the days afterward have been a world away from her first round of parenthood. This time, Marcelino is by her side, even in the middle of the night, when he wakes up to warm Jadiel's formula.

As for Christopher, he fretted at first: "Nobody's going to say I am cute now. They'll say the baby is cute." But he grinned when he met Jadiel in the hospital, and now he helps Elizabet, chattering to his brother in Spanish and English.

"I wake up Christopher every day with the same song: Good morning to you. Very soft. And I say the same song in Spanish: Buenos dias," Elizabet says. For Jadiel, it's the Elvis Presley standard: "Wise men say / only fools rush in / but I can't help / falling in love with you."

The family speaks Spanish at home; Christopher and Elizabet speak English at school. Marcelino is still more comfortable in his native tongue. The baby takes in everyone's words.

"I want them to study, to be healthy, to live here," Elizabet says. "To be good men. To be something in life."

She thinks about her own crossings, about the younger sister in Cuba who once cautioned Elizabet she'd never be strong enough to have a baby. She remembered that warning during her labor with Christopher. "When I got the pain and had the contractions, I think about my sister. She's thinking I cannot do it. But I am going to do it. That made me strong. That's what I am doing now."

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