THE PARENTS: Myna E. W. Christian, 31, and Rodney Christian, 41, of Logan
THE CHILD: Rodney Jr., born July 1, 2022
FIRST DATE: They saw a movie at the Pearl Theatre on Temple University’s campus, opting for that location because it was closer to Myna’s home. But the theater was being renovated — ”a hole in the wall,” Myna says — and Rodney fumed that they hadn’t chosen a nicer venue.
Myna wouldn’t even give a man her phone number unless he checked off certain boxes on her internal list: A person of faith. In the proximate age range. Gainfully employed.
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So when the stranger at ShopRite blurted, “Excuse me, miss, can I ask you a question?” her response was a snippy, “You don’t have any questions for me.”
Still, she had one for him: “Are you a Christian?” His response: “My last name is Christian.” Then he told her he was 35. “I said, ‘I’m 24. You’re too old for me.’ I wouldn’t talk to him,” Myna recalls.
Rodney persisted. Eventually, he managed to get Myna’s number, but she refused to answer his messages. Seven months went by. In January 2017, she was startled by a text from Rodney: “Are you married yet?” She wrote back, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
But this time, they began talking … and talking, in daily phone calls that lasted three hours and felt different from conversations either had had with dates before.
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“That is when I fell in love,” Myna says. “I’d never met a guy I could talk to like he was my girlfriend. We would talk about the most random things.”
Previously, Rodney had been a full-time Uber driver. But he confided that meeting Myna, who was headed for nursing school, prompted him to “up his game” professionally; he’d put himself through casino training and was working as a slot attendant at Harrah’s.
Myna still felt wary of their age difference, and of the fact that Rodney had a teenage daughter from a previous relationship. But he gradually bolstered her faith: He ate her spaghetti, even though there was eggplant in the sauce. He joined her church.
They enrolled in premarital counseling, and when the pastor asked about children, Rodney explained, “I’m a different person than when I was 17. I could plan for the responsibility. I have a good job; I can take care of a kid.” He said he was willing to start over with a newborn.
In December 2018, he proposed at an Outback Steakhouse, after surreptitiously asking a server to record the moment on his phone. They married three months later — a ceremony meant to be small until a few relatives decided to crash the occasion.
“We had written our own vows, but the pastor also gave us vows to say, and there was this part about being meek and quiet,” Myna recalls. “I thought: What? I’m not a very quiet person. But I understood that it wasn’t ‘quiet’ as in ‘silent.’ It was quiet in a spiritual way.”
After marriage, they had a pragmatic plan: Rodney would move into the home Myna owned, where she lived with her mother and aunt. He would support her while she attended an accelerated one-year nursing program. They would travel — Las Vegas, California, a trip to Disney World with 45 relatives. And then, they would try to conceive.
It was Rodney who urged, “Take the pregnancy test.” Myna had been acting strangely: inconsolable crying jags in the middle of the night; surges of irritation every time she spied her husband.
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“Technically, that was our first try,” Myna says. She immediately shared the results with her mother and aunt, with Rodney’s mom and his daughter, with her closest friends in a group chat.
“It’s the best news ever, and then it’s taboo — you’re supposed to wait 12 weeks to say something. That’s so unnatural. I just couldn’t do it,” she says.
The pregnancy was miserable. “I hated being pregnant. I had hyperemesis. I was dehydrated to the point where I had to have an IV placed. You’re supposed to be so happy. There were some moments when you have to fake it and just try to enjoy.”
It helped to learn the baby’s sex, so they could name him and talk to him. And Myna began seeing a therapist to help her manage the stress of pregnancy and her fears about the future. “Everything was changing. I thought: I’m going to raise a Black boy, and he might get shot.”
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She was determined to labor at home for as long as possible, then give birth without interventions or an epidural. So when her contractions began on June 30, then amped up throughout the day, she remained resolute.
Rodney put counterpressure on her back, the way he’d learned in a mindfulness birth class the two took. She rolled on a birth ball and let her body unclench in a portable tub. When her contractions were a minute apart — Rodney had to argue with her about their timing — she finally relented, and they headed for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
“When they checked me, I was 9 centimeters dilated,” Myna says. “I told security, ‘I am not moving from my husband. If he can’t go up with me, I’ll just have my baby right here by the elevators.’ ”
After that, she recalls the chronology by the minute: at 12:57 a.m., the doula arrived. At 1:15, she reached full dilation. She climbed onto the bed and squatted. Nine pushes. Rodney Jr. arrived at 1:28.
His father, who had felt too squeamish to look closely, now eyed his son. “They wiped him off, put him on the scale, then I put him on my chest so he could lay on me.” Myna remembers thinking: “It’s you. The one who was inside of me. Nice to meet you.”
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Several sleep-starved weeks later, she’s learned her son’s favorite position while nursing; she’s figured out that when he begins to fuss, there’s a three-minute grace period before a full-tilt scream breaks out. She’s learned that a ferocious “mama bear” impulse emerges in her if someone tries to kiss the baby.
“I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. Something definitely is different, but it hasn’t hit me all the way just yet.”
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Welcoming a son with love and gratitude - The Philadelphia Inquirer
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