Skip to content
Life
Link copied to clipboard

The Parent Trip: Eliza and Matt Schondra of Spring City

The guy across the room at Montana West had already met Eliza's first qualification: He looked good with his cowboy hat on - and off.

THE PARENTS: Eliza Schondra, 32, and Matt Schondra, 33, of Spring City
THE KIDS: Wyatt Charles, 5; Scarlett Elizabeth, 4; Emmett Kirk, 2; Bridgett Celia, born December 8, 2015
THE DATE ELIZA FOUND OUT SHE WAS PREGNANT WITH THEIR FOURTH: April 1, 2015… but it was no joke.

The guy across the room at Montana West had already met Eliza's first qualification: He looked good with his cowboy hat on - and off.

For Matt, the first trial came later, when he invited Eliza to join friends in Collegeville for a NASCAR race party. His buddies were unanimous: This woman was a catch.

Within a few months of their February meeting, she said, "I love you," and he met her parents. Relatives thought Matt might propose during a trip to Europe that fall. But it wasn't until they'd returned and went out to Maggiano's, nestled on the same side of a booth, that Matt pulled out a small box and nudged it toward Eliza's shaking hands.

After the wedding, an outdoor ceremony in 100-degree heat, Matt was eager to get started on the family plan. He wanted three kids, preferably boy/girl/boy.

Eliza's response? "One, and then we'll see." She'd grown up primarily as an only child - three half-siblings weren't raised with her - in a quiet house in Washington. "I just didn't know what to expect. I didn't want to make any promises."

A few months later, Matt was stirring potato soup when Eliza emerged from the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test in hand. "It had happened so fast," he says. "I was kind of shocked."

It was an easy pregnancy; Eliza gave horseback riding lessons and mucked out stalls until two days before the baby came. The only stumbling blocks were other people: their dour warnings about how life was going to change; their disapproval when Eliza said she hoped for a natural birth.

"People would say, 'You can't go through labor without an epidural,' " she recalls. "That just fueled my desire to do it."

And she did, even after 27 hours of Pitocin-cranked contractions that taught her why childbirth is called "labor." Matt caught the baby: wet blond hair, round face. "People had told me newborn babies were so little," but at 7 pounds, 15 ounces, Wyatt looked big.

Both remember the vertiginous learning curve: trying to decipher each cry, to diaper a newborn, to calm someone who can't explain his distress. "I'm used to fixing things, solving problems," Matt remembers. "But with him, I had no idea."

Eliza says it took five months to adjust to Wyatt's constant presence and need for care. But the love, she recalls, flooded her instantly. "Four days after Wyatt was born, I remember saying to Matt, 'I'm ready for another one.' I was amazed at the love I felt. I couldn't get enough of it."

There was more to come. Wyatt was a little over a year old when Eliza became pregnant again. This time, she delivered at a birth center; her water broke, and within 10 minutes, Scarlett was nestled on her chest.

"Since I was in the bathtub, they left me alone and let me birth her myself. That was really nice: how quiet it was; nobody yelling, 'Push! Push!' "

Matt and Eliza quickly learned that raising two kids meant spreading their affection, not dividing it. When Eliza nursed Scarlett, she'd rub Wyatt's back. Both kids cuddled with them in the morning.

"With the first one, you try to follow all the guidelines," Eliza says. "But with Scarlett, I listened to more of what felt right to me."

Including the inner voice that urged her to have another child. Just before Scarlett's first birthday, Matt had a hunch his wife was pregnant, and though Eliza felt "a little crankier, and definitely more tired," she once again had an easy pregnancy and delivered this third baby the day after Thanksgiving.

Now they were five - with two toddlers, one in the midst of potty-training, and an infant - in a 960-square-foot house they were eager to sell. When prospective buyers were due, they shoved toys into cubbies and dragged a vacuum over the rugs.

After the house sold, they had a month to pack and move . . . into Eliza's parents' finished basement in Birdsboro. "To let us come in, with our three crazy kids and our basset hound, was very generous," Eliza says. And by the time they'd found a lot in Spring City and built their own home, she was pregnant once more.

Perhaps it would be another girl, for symmetry. Or a third boy, to balance the gender ratio of grandchildren on Matt's side of the family.

Bridgett - whose name chimed with her siblings', two syllables ending with double Ts - had her own plan in mind. That included arriving eight days late, on an evening that included a trip to an urgent-care clinic; Emmett had jumped on Wyatt's bed, bounced into the headboard and ended up with a bloody gash.

By the time they got home from that adventure, Eliza's contractions were less than five minutes apart. Matt trundled her into his 2005 Chevy truck, calculating the quickest route to Einstein Medical Center Montgomery.

But Eliza had been down this road before; once her water broke, there was no turning back. She gripped the dashboard, pushed twice, and watched her daughter's head emerge. By the time Matt jogged around to the passenger side, the baby was born.

Eliza cradled Bridgett to her chest all the way to the hospital. "The whole drive, I was thinking: This is the first time I'm driving with a baby that's not in a car seat," Matt says.

Now, their house is a universe away from the tranquil home of Eliza's childhood. Rare moments of serenity - a family snuggle in the morning - swiftly unravel into shrieking and hair-pulling, Emmett racing through the hallway on his tiptoes to chase Scarlett, who in turn is dashing after Wyatt, to a soundtrack of Kenny Chesney's "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." Bridgett snoozes through the bedlam.

"Parenting takes every emotion you've ever had and multiplies it by 10," Eliza says. "You've never been as mad or as frustrated. You've never loved as much."

WELCOME TO PARENTHOOD

If you've become a parent — for the first, second or fifth time — within the last six months, e-mail us why we should feature your story: parents@phillynews.com. Giving birth, adopting, or becoming a stepparent or guardian all count. Unfortunately, we can't respond individually to all submissions. If your story is chosen, you will be contacted.