The Parent Trip: Marissa and JT Donnell of Coatesville

When JT asked Marissa to be his girlfriend, she giddily shifted her Facebook status from "single" to "in a relationship." When she took a pregnancy test in the bathroom of a Target in Exton, she posted photos of the stick to the website www.cafemom.com.

An iPhone app supplied that baby's nickname - Jaxon, derived from the family name Jacque - and Facebook was the arena for proclaiming the couple's next transition. Their post involved a collage of photos, including one that zoomed in on Marissa's belly. It got 350 "likes."

From the start - when Marissa, then the single mother of 3-year-old Leyla, and JT, a bouncer with a scraggly beard and riveting blue eyes - met at a West Chester bar, their relationship unfolded in both the actual and digital world.

They flirted via Facebook message; Marissa said she'd go out to dinner with JT only if he promised to shed that unruly beard. He showed up at the Olive Garden clean-shaven.

Marissa took note of JT's ease with kids - how his nephew barreled toward him, shouting, "Uncle JT!" - and gradually introduced him to Leyla, first as "my friend" and then, before the two moved in together, as "Mommy's boyfriend."

"We started talking about kids before we started talking about marriage," Marissa says. "I always wanted Leyla to have siblings, and I didn't want them to be too far apart in age."

In March 2013, a month after the couple began trying to conceive, Marissa's cat, normally standoffish, began behaving oddly; for three mornings in a row, she lay purring on Marissa's belly. That led Marissa to the Target bathroom and the pregnancy test she immediately photographed and texted to JT.

Marissa describes her pregnancy as "peak," and Leyla was delighted at the prospect of big-sisterhood; she'd come back after spending time with her father, who shares custody, wrap her arms around Marissa and say, "Hi, baby!"

As for JT, "I remember being happy," he says. "At the same time, as a first-time parent, I had no idea what it was to raise a human being and have somebody rely on me to keep them alive." JT's a follow-the-flow guy, a man who doesn't get excited about vacations until he boards the flight, a father-to-be who wasn't anxious about the scheduled C-section until the moment he pulled on his scrubs.

The birth of his son brought a tsunami of emotion: "Fears and happiness and excitement and love . . . all compacted into a collage of feeling."

"They brought him over to me, and he was whimpering like a puppy," Marissa recalls. "He gave this little pouty lip. I was bawling my eyes out and saying, 'It's OK.' "

At home with Leyla and Jaxon through a frigid winter, Marissa spent a lot of time doing Pinterest craft projects, building snowmen and watching Frozen again and again; JT, meanwhile, timed himself to change diapers faster and faster.

When Jaxon was about nine months old, Marissa woke up to find the cat on her belly once again. She slipped the pregnancy test under JT's pillow with a note: "I can't wait to meet you."

"We wanted [another baby], but not at that specific time," she recalls. "We had just started looking into buying a house." At the same time, she was glad the kids would be close in age.

This pregnancy felt different: severe nausea, then back pain so piercing JT sometimes had to carry Marissa to bed. At the 20-week anatomy scan, the doctor remeasured every body part the tech had just scrutinized, then summoned Marissa to his office.

He scribbled a series of numbers: The baby's right femur, tibia, and fibula were all shorter than the left, indications of proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD), a rare, nonhereditary birth defect.

Marissa went home and hit the Web: a Facebook support group for parents of kids with PFFD, a doctor in Delaware who specialized in the disorder. She found solace in her research, but JT felt unsettled: "The first thing you see are these Google images, and it's scary. You're terrified of the unknown."

The physician at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children provided a different diagnosis, but the same bottom line: The baby would be born with his right leg shorter than the left and would require multiple surgeries to lengthen the limb.

Marissa had kept her family members in the loop since the first growth scan; now, she broadened the circle. "I did post a Facebook status about it, letting everybody know. My mind-set was: I didn't want him to be born and then get a thousand questions about why his leg looked the way it did. It was helpful for me to be that public."

Talon emerged - Marissa's first natural birth following two C-sections - looking healthy except for his right leg: all five toes intact on that foot; no cleft palate. He had Jaxon's black hair and signature pouty lip.

As for the future, Marissa's done her homework: They'll visit a specialist in Florida to learn about the ankle-strengthening and limb-lengthening surgeries Talon will likely undergo. They're starting to fund-raise for the anticipated medical bills.

"I fear that he'll be in physical pain from all these surgeries, and maybe spiritual pain, seeing kids who don't have these kinds of challenges roughhousing, playing in the backyard," says JT.

But along with his anxieties, he has something else to offer his son. JT was born with just two fingers, a pinkie and a thumb, on his left hand. "People would ask me, 'How do you tie your shoes with seven fingers? How do you ride a bike?' and I'd ask, 'How do you do it with 10?' I think the human body is crazy, with how we adapt and overcome pretty much anything."

What JT understands - what he hopes to show Talon, and Jaxon, and Leyla - is that "different" is normal when it's the thing you've always known.

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