New Family Waits for Baby

The Bornyasz family of Culver City--Jan, 37, and Matt, 46--have been married for six months and, in November, are expecting a child, what Jan terms “a very deliberate, very planned, very wanted baby. We spent a great deal of time talking about whether we wanted to do this at this point in our lives.”

It has been a difficult pregnancy, and with Jan’s age as a consideration, an amniocentesis was done this week to determine whether the fetus is normal. “That has been my biggest fear,” she said. If test results prove positive, Jan and Matt have agreed on an abortion. She asked, “As older parents, who would be responsible 30 years from now?”

It is not the first child for either. Jan has a 15-year-old daughter, Teresa Perez, from a brief marriage that ended in divorce 15 years ago. Matt’s first marriage, a 20-year union that produced two daughters, now 22 and 14, and a son, 18, also ended in divorce, three years before he and Jan met on a blind date.

“Teresa and I had been on our own basically since her birth,” Jan said. “There were some real difficult years for us. I was at one time unemployed. We had bouts with illness. We had lots of deaths in the family.”

It was, in short, a time of her life during which she grew from the admittedly “self-focused” 21-year-old of her first marriage to a thoughtful woman who values and nurtures her life with Matt, whom she calls “a good man.” She said, “I think both of us feel real good about the relationship we share, and our ability to learn from our previous parenting experiences.”

Said Matt: “I think we have a lot to offer a child in terms of wanting a child,” Matt said. “We do wonder what it will be like for the child to have older parents.”

Matt, who is director of engineering for Subaru in Garden Grove, and Jan, a group production manager at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, plan to be partners in the natural childbirth, which for Jan will be a new experience. “When I delivered Teresa,” she said, “you were something of an enigma if you had the father in the delivery room.” Matt, however, was present for the birth of his younger daughter.

And this time around, he said, he is going to be more of a partner, too, in rearing the child. With his first set of children, he was “very involved in supporting my family and developing a career.” In addition, he said, there were marital conflicts that resulted in his relinquishing much of the decision-making and he just “went with the flow.”

Teresa, who said she has not seen her father since 1978 and “always wanted” her mother to remarry, has chosen a name for the baby, if it is a girl--Kendra. And she is on record as willing to be a sometime baby sitter for her baby brother or sister. “I baby-sit now every Saturday,” she said. “I don’t want to do it every night. If I want to go out, I hope they will understand that.”

Jan will return to work after the baby comes--”It’s a financial necessity”--and, she said, “I’m looking forward to relying on Teresa a great deal.”

‘Sister and Confidante’

Her mother said, “Our desire to have her involved is because I think she has a great deal to bring . . . not as cheap labor. I think she’ll be a wonderful sister and confidante.” But she is no Pollyanna either about possible conflicts between a teen-ager and a toddler: “Having a baby get into Teresa’s room, for example. That is something she has not had to deal with.”

The one dark cloud is Matt’s estrangement from his daughters. Whereas his son “was very pleased and very positive” about the new baby, he said, “I really don’t know how my daughters will, or have, reacted. I don’t see them, unfortunately. It’s their choice. The children were invited to the wedding and the oldest two came and were very pleasant. The youngest one at the last minute said, ‘I can’t come and I can’t condone what you’re doing.’ At this stage she refuses to talk to me.”

“I’m not interested in being replacements,” said Jan. “I would hope Matt’s children would be very involved with us. But the girls, to be real candid, have not accepted our relationship, and I don’t expect them to accept this baby.

“It’s been unfortunate because everyone’s the loser.”

Family Support System

In Matt’s view, “Jan’s experience, and my experience, have made us a little more tuned into each other. I think there’s a support system that our baby will receive.”

Jan agrees. “In a most wonderful way,” she said, “some of the things I missed he brings to the family and some of the things he was hungry for I bring. He has a concern for my welfare and Teresa’s that is very touching. I think I bring a certain traditional value system into the family.”

Their backgrounds could scarcely be more different. Jan is Jewish; her first husband was Catholic but converted to Judaism, and Teresa, too, is Jewish. Matt, whose paternal grandparents came over from Hungary, is a non-practicing Catholic. The baby they have together will be raised in the Jewish faith.

About to become a new father again after 14 years, Matt is convinced “It’s easier now that I’ve had an opportunity to see three children grow. I’m aware that these (things like messy rooms) are all passing stages and if we let the children live long enough they’ll become young adults.”

Babies also take stamina. Jan said, “I think between the three of us we’ll have enough energy to entertain this child.”

Matt, a non-joiner, does draw the line at some things, such as membership in Indian Guides. “Don’t ask me to sit in a circle and chant.” Jan laughed, thinking of the old days when being a single parent at such activities was akin to “wearing a neon sign,” and said she’d have no qualms today about going alone with her child.

“If Matt doesn’t want to sit in a circle,” she said, “I’ll sit in a circle. Or Teresa will sit in a circle.”