The Children’s Hour
Faith Snyder
Conceived during Lily and Holden’s long-awaited 1997 reunion, Faith is the ATWT supercouple’s first child together. (Luke is, of course, Damian’s biological son). Naturally, her 1998 birth was fraught with disaster and, appropriately, kidnapping. Lily and Julia had been taken hostage by a crazed, vengeance-minded David Stenbeck, who ended up helping Julia deliver Lily’s baby in an abandoned cabin in the woods. David fell in love at first sight with the infant and even saved her life with CPR when she wasn’t breathing at first. A delirious Lily managed to escape with her newborn daughter, but she ended up wandering through the woods until David tracked her down and took the baby. While Holden and Julia met David for a ransom exchange, Jack found a baby in his car. They “killed” and buried David, rescued Lily, and finally took their daughter home — and named her Hope. But it turned out to be the wrong baby. Months later, Hope was having developmental problems; it was determined that she was suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. Since Lily didn’t drink during her pregnancy, the Snyders got suspicious, but it wasn’t until Hope needed a bone-marrow transplant that they realized the baby was not their biological child. Meanwhile, David — now going by the name Reid Hamilton and working as Julia’s psychologist — was raising baby Melinda with the help of nanny Rita. In mid-1999, Hope was nearly a year old when they discovered that she was Denise and Andy’s biological child. With Molly’s help, Lily and Holden tracked down David and got their baby back. They renamed her Faith (for the faith they kept in finding her) and gave Hope to Denise.
Parker Joe Munson
While Parker is completely beloved by his mother, Carly, his conception was more about money. Rosanna, bitter about Carly’s fling with Mike, had set up a complicated
trust fund for her sister: Carly would get $50 million if she had a baby
that wasn’t fathered by Mike. But when Carly came back to Oakdale in late
1997, she learned that Rosanna had adjusted the terms — she now had to be
married to the father and had to give birth by December 31, 1998. Still, she
was determined to get the cash. Though she was drawn to Jack, she first set her sights on solid Hal. Then, she actually fell for Jack and was going to end things with Hal — until she found out that because he had been injured, he couldn’t have sex in time to impregnate her to meet her deadline. Desperate, she turned back to Hal and persuaded him to marry her in March 1998. When she didn’t get pregnant right away, she turned to John (himself smarting over the recent loss of a baby) for help with artificial insemination. What she didn’t know was that he had used his own sample, not an anonymous one like she had assumed. She found that out after she got pregnant and realized he was probably the father, so she divorced Hal and wed John. She then gave birth to Parker, with John, Jack and Julia’s help, on the couch at Jack’s house during an ice storm at 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. She got her money and even won custody when John sued. Unfortunately, Molly knew that Hal, not John, was the father. She had switched the paternity-test results without telling Carly. But Brad did find out and blackmailed Carly into marrying him so that he could share in her riches. Brad ended up exposing the truth to everyone and anyone, and though Carly struggled to maintain shared custody of Parker, he often spent time with dad Hal (and his half siblings, Jennifer and Will). Parker also had a close relationship with Jack, who Carly eventually married, and when Jack was presumed dead, it was Parker’s psychic connection to his stepdad that helped lead Carly back to them. Which brings us to….
Conversation
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