Sanchez and the stork

Of course, "unwed" for Sanchez, like Bristol Palin, is meant to be a temporary circumstance. What helped Sarah Palin through a potentially dicey matter could also benefit Sanchez. "I'm hopeful there won't be this sort of ugliness about something that for me is really a blessed event," she told me. Sanchez said she waited until after the election to break the news because she wanted the first trimester to have passed safely.

So how might Sanchez's pregnancy play out in her district, which is 61% Latino? The national Latina teenage pregnancy rate is twice the country's average. Could a teenager point to her and say, "If she can do it, why can't I?"

The differences, Sanchez thinks, are substantial, and that's a big teachable moment. She's not a "surprised pregnant teenager," 15 or 16, poor, jobless, a dropout. "I'm established in my life. I have a career. I'm financially stable. I have a loving, committed partner. This is something that was planned, not something that was accidental."

Sanchez is 39 and divorced, and early this year, her doctor told her that "if your intention is to become a mother, I wouldn't put it off." So she and Sullivan didn't. They haven't yet set a wedding date. As he told me, "We have the rest of our lives to get engaged and married -- we don't have the rest of our lives" for Sanchez to become pregnant.

There's one point on which Sanchez and Sullivan (and President-elect Barack Obama) would agree with Quayle: fathers, and having a "supportive and nurturing environment with two parents who will love" the baby very much.

Sanchez's mother, Maria -- a "pretty traditional Latin woman," says her daughter -- had just about given up on Sanchez having a child. Now Maria is "over the moon." When Sanchez and Sullivan visited her recently, she taught him to make tamales and bought celebratory beer just for him: "How about a Gwee-ness?"

Baby Sullivan is due May 21. The waiting list for day care on Capitol Hill is so long that you have to sign up long before the baby's born. Congresswoman, the news embargo is broken -- now you can.

Do I hear a mazel tov?

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patt.morrison@latimes.com