Roxborough Couple Raising Three Children Build Family Life Around Empathy and Listening

For Meghan Wells, 38, and Jake Wells, 43, of Roxborough, the moment before their first child arrived was one of quiet. Meghan had reached 10 centimeters, and the two were alone in a labor room at Lankenau Medical Center in September 2018. They held hands and reminded each other that their lives were about to change. "Are you ready? I'm ready," Meghan recalls saying.

The couple had been together for five years by then. They met at a SIPS happy hour event in Center City, where Jake was the man with a pheasant tattoo on his arm and Meghan was the woman chatting with everyone. Over a bucket of beers they talked about empathy and authenticity. Meghan says she left the conversation captivated, while Jake recalls that it felt as if she had been there all along.

Jake was living in Fishtown in a nearly bare apartment, furnished mainly with his childhood dining room table and a motorcycle he was restoring. During the many snow days of the winter of 2014, Meghan would come over with her cat and relax on an air mattress the two nicknamed "Fishtown Beach" while Jake worked remotely at the table. By June of that year they had moved into a rowhouse in East Falls.

The following year, after a disappointing diner breakfast and a trip to Smith Playground cut short because the slide was closed, Jake asked Meghan to join him at the dining room table. "Take my hand," he said, before proposing. They married in two ceremonies: a short Catholic service at a Manayunk church and a do-it-yourself ceremony at Morris Arboretum on a July day so humid that the bridesmaids lifted their dresses above their knees.

The couple wanted more than one child but fewer than five, and began trying after Valentine's Day 2017. Conceiving took nearly a year, a period Meghan describes as lonely. When she learned she was pregnant, they posed with small chalkboards for a photographer friend. Jake wrote, "You are my rock," and Meghan wrote, "You're going to be a daddy." Early in the pregnancy, she sprinted through Jefferson Station on her commute to avoid "tasting the smells." The night before son Elliott was born, she dreamed her grandmother handed her a baby, and woke at 4:30 a.m. as contractions began.

Early parenthood brought both joy and strain. Meghan was laid off seven weeks into her maternity leave and experienced postpartum depression, even as the family took Elliott to Johnny Brenda's, the Shore, and trick-or-treating in a Gritty costume. They conceived their second child quickly, but the pandemic changed that pregnancy. Meghan attended appointments alone in March 2020 at a hospital that she says looked like a zombie movie. Daughter Maeve arrived while Meghan was already 6 centimeters dilated and hiccuped for her first 30 minutes rather than crying.

That period was turbulent. Jake lost his job the month before Maeve's birth, and his parents' planned visit was derailed by their own health concerns. Meghan later entered a 10-day partial hospitalization program at a women's emotional wellness center. Stability came through medication, therapy, skill building, forgiveness and time, she says.

Their third child, August, known as Augie, was born Aug. 31, 2022, and was a surprise in timing. Meghan describes the pregnancy as beautiful and calm, and the birth as relatively easy, with three pushes and two "blissful nights" in the hospital. The family calls him their "eternal summer." The couple say the name would have been the same had he been born a day later.

Meghan says they began having children during the 2016 election, and that raising good people is one way to improve the world. They teach their children empathy, self-awareness, listening and kindness, she says, and parenting has taught her to relinquish control. Jake says parenthood has opened a new part of him, upending the self-understanding he had reached before having children.

Each night, the family of five gathers at Jake's childhood table, marked with dings, scratches and Sharpie doodles, where he proposed. They raise their glasses and shout, "Team Wells!"