The baby hadn't peed for 24 hours. So his panicked mothers called the hospital. "Should we bring him back?" Nicole asked the advice nurse at Capitol Health Medical Center. "It's not like I was trying to return him," she recalls. "It wasn't like: 'This one's not working.' "
Nicole and Christina had spent their first night at home with PJ on the couch, each holding him for a 90-minute shift while the other tried to sleep. Nicole was breast-feeding - 16 or 18 times a day - an experience that, so far, had yielded more pain than milk. "It was like being a prisoner of war," Nicole says. "The nurse said, 'Use your judgment.' I said, 'I have no judgment!' "
Moments after that agitated phone call, Christina burst into the bathroom where Nicole was taking a long-awaited shower: "He peed! He peed everywhere!" PJ had soaked himself, his onesie, and the couch. His mothers were elated.
Never mind that Nicole and Christina have postgraduate degrees, that they are competent professionals (a pharmacist and a dentist, respectively), that they'd attended the requisite classes on birth and breast-feeding. This 9-pound, 22-inch baby had them utterly undone.
Before that, life had been a relatively easy sail. They were best friends at their Bensalem middle school - two math geeks in the school's gifted program, impervious to other girls' "drama" about boys. By high school, their relationship was an "open secret," Nicole says; a science teacher even urged her to take Christina to the prom.
Though they attended different colleges - Christina at Bryn Mawr and Nicole at the University of Pittsburgh - they remained a couple; Christina came along on McGorty family vacations and was a frequent guest at their holiday table. When Nicole told her parents that the two were planning a wedding for September 2011, her mother had only one concern: "She thought I was going to wear a 'lady pantsuit.' She thought I was going to be the dude."
After Nicole explained that both she and Christina would wear dresses, her mother jumped eagerly into wedding details, helping the couple arrange a 125-person reception at Atlantic City's Chelsea Hotel; a highlight was the surprise flash-mob dance - arranged by the bridal party without Christina and Nicole's knowledge - to Lady Gaga's "Telephone."
Nicole describes herself and her wife as "checklist people." By their late 20s, they had ticked several key items off the agenda: Graduate with professional degrees. Get jobs. Get married. Buy a house (adjacent to Nicole's parents' home in Bensalem).
It was time to think about kids. Both women wanted to experience pregnancy and childbirth, but Nicole had better maternity benefits, so it made sense for her to go first. As for a source of sperm, there was just one name on their list: Alex Frazer, their best friend since sixth grade, now a lawyer living with his partner in South Philadelphia.
Alex was smart, kind, and good-looking; he also had strengths that complemented theirs. Nicole is tone-deaf, but Alex can sing. He's artsy; the women excel at science and math. He taught himself French; Christina, after eight years of Spanish, can barely say Hola.
"Maybe genetics would cook up a good balance," Nicole remembers thinking.
The three had joked for years about Alex becoming the donor for their future offspring, but now the conversations turned serious. They spoke with a genetics counselor and a psychologist; they talked about their visions of family and Alex's involvement. They pictured him as "Uncle Alex," a significant person in the baby's life, but not a third parent.
When they thought about using an anonymous donor, Nicole says, they worried about a lack of medical information or the inability to answer their child's questions about his origins. "Our fear of using a known donor was that the kid would have too many people who loved him. We decided that wasn't the worst problem you could have."
They figured it could take six months to become pregnant, but after their second try, Nicole's doctor called with good news. Christina was seeing dental patients, unable to check her phone as Nicole texted message after message. Finally, she sent a picture of a giant sperm with the words: "WE PREGNANT!"
Nine months passed swiftly: not a spot of morning sickness, never a missed day of work. And the birth - in the brand-new "baby hotel" suites of Capitol Health Medical Center in Hopewell, N.J. - was, in Nicole's words, "15 hard but not impossible hours."
Both secretly hoped they could stay at the hospital, with its cleaning service, hot meals, and nurses on hand 24/7, to coach them about diaper-changing and umbilical care. Nicole was sure someone would figure out their incompetence when Christina took 30 minutes to install the car seat in their Subaru Impreza, checking again and again that the straps were snug. Christinia says, "I'm still shocked they let us take a baby home."
Once there, even with Nicole's mother popping over frequently to cook and hold PJ - named for Nicole's father, Patrick - so they could at least shower, they found parenthood unexpectedly draining. "It was a shock to learn that just following the rule book didn't fix things," Nicole says. "He's 8 months old, but still a terrible sleeper."
Each month brings challenges - teething, fussiness after immunizations, the battle to avoid winter germs - along with milestones: Seeing PJ smile. Watching him learn to crawl. Hearing Nicole's dad whisper to the baby, "You're my guy."
The "checklist people" have found that their favorite moments are off-script: when Nicole thrusts a giggling PJ into the air again and again until her arms wobble; when Christina uses her Donald Duck voice or creeps out from behind a door, monster-style; when PJ's face, with his sober arched eyebrows, breaks into delight.
"He has such a serious face," Nicole says, "and then he laughs, like life is the funniest thing that could ever have happened to him."
The Parent Trip
If you've become a parent - for the first, second or fifth time - within the last six months, e-mail us why we should feature your story: parents@phillynews.com.
(Giving birth, adopting, or becoming a stepparent or guardian all count.) Unfortunately, we can't respond individually to all submissions If your story is chosen, you will be contacted.