"I sort of ignored the fact that I was pregnant," Payanzo says, although by that time little else could explain her symptoms. To be on the safe side, she quit smoking and started exercising.

Ignoring her pregnancy was not an option for Ocon, who was immersed in the life of a typical undergraduate when she learned she was two months pregnant.

Within the course of the next month, Ocon withdrew from classes, started seeing a therapist and turned to her family and roommates for support.

"I was sleeping around the clock," says Ocon. "Sometimes I would get up in the morning and stagger into the dining hall to grab a bagel. I put on more weight in that month and a half than I did during the rest of my pregnancy."

While at school the news circulated among only the tightest of Ocon's circles--her roommates. Her family also knew within hours.

"I was the first one she told when she found out. She actually e-mailed me the news. I called her, and we talked," S. Sara Ocon, Gina's younger sister, writes in an e-mail from Duke University, where she is currently a junior majoring in chemistry. "She was pretty sure from the beginning that she wanted to have the baby, which I supported completely."

Ocon's parents, who divorced when she was four, had different reactions.

"My mom cried and cried. She had been a single mom when my parents divorced and knew exactly what I had gotten myself into," Ocon says.

Ocon's father, Paul B. Ocon, says he feels he handled his daughter's phone call as well as could be expected.

"I was disappointed that she allowed it to happen to her at this time in her life," he said. "When I spoke to her first, we talked about her options: having the baby and quitting school, having an abortion, arranging an adoption."

"Whatever decision she made was going to have a profound effect on her life," he adds. "She needed to make her own decision."

Still, Ocon had one more person to consider: Bailey's father.

"It was a summer fling, but we were really enamored with each other," Ocon says of her relationship with Tommasso Maggiore, a high-school acquaintance to whom she was re-introduced the summer after her first year at Harvard.

"That summer was all fun and games. He completely pampered me. When I told him I was pregnant, he was so excited," Ocon says. "He was a 20-year-old male, and he said, 'This is great. I want a family.'"

Assured by Maggiore that they would return to Cambridge as a family the following fall, Ocon flew home after Thanks-giving break and prepared to begin a new life as a wife and mother.