The Soma looks cool. I don't know how much of a tinkerer you or your husband are. But if you keep an eye on CL, you'll run across vintage mixte bikes for $150-200. Wouldn't be hard to swap in a 5 or 7 speed hub and powder coat the frame to your favorite unique, groovy color.
Believe me, I was considering that right up until I pulled the trigger. But, nothing was quite right and I sort of need it now. I started looking at 20 weeks, but really felt fine on my regular bike and ended up traveling a lot in August so finding something suitable fell off my radar. Suddenly my belly is nearly hitting the stem when I stop suddenly, among some other issues. So, I put it off too long. There were a couple of neat mixtes but really, step through felt right. Swinging my leg over the seat is sort of ok, stepping through is great but lifting the leg halfway to step through a mixte frame felt the most awkward for me. There were a couple good looking step throughs on CL, but the ones that weren't rust buckets were 21". Who were these leggy bike riding supermodels of the 70s and 80s? I don't know. It's possible the sellers measured wrong but with the belly rapidly outgrowing the frame, I didn't have the energy to figure it out. I definitely want a project bike someday though. Eric's really the tinkerer but it's starting to fascinate me.