This October, while "the kids" were studying for midterms, Ocon was taking care of Bailey, who was diagnosed with an ear infection and the flu. After spending four straight sleepless nights with her daughter, Ocon was driven in tears to the Bureau of Study Counsel for guidance.

"There are nights when I have insomnia where I can't sleep because of the stress," Ocon says. "Being a single parent is a scary concept that I don't think a lot of people understand."

"Someone depends on you for their very existence. It's terrifying when I feel like I'm falling but I know that I can't. If I fall, my daughter comes down with me," she adds.

So Ocon is forced to turn to others for help. Another family in Peabody Terrace watches Bailey Saturday afternoons when Ocon needs to study, and her next-door neighbor always makes sure to check if she's run short of anything before he heads to the grocery store.

Bailey spent the weekend with relatives that live just outside of Boston so that Ocon could write her first graded tutorial paper on John Stuart Mill.

"I'm never going to get straight As here--I'll be amazed if I get one A," Ocon says. "There are times when I have to put down my books for my own sanity. I need to spend time with my daughter."

No moment is wasted around Bailey. Classical music filters through the apartment; Ocon is a great believer in the music's ability to raise her daughter's I.Q. Standing over the stove stirring a pot of baked beans, Bailey's new-found craving, Ocon bends over for an impromptu vocabulary lesson.

"Mmmm...you like baked beans, don't you?" Ocon coos to the high chair-strapped, squirming toddler. "Beans," she repeats.

Giggling uncontrollably, Bailey flings her cup to the floor. So much for the joy of learning.

Popping half an animal cracker elephant into her own mouth, Ocon gives Bailey the other half and launches into baby talk, interrupting an otherwise articulate sentence.

"When I come home, I'm not talking to my friends. I'm talking to Bailey, and it's all about ga-ga-goo-goo," Ocon says.

Even with Bailey visiting her father in California, Ocon had trouble re-adjusting to typical undergraduate life.

"[Eating in the dining halls again] made me feel the loneliness of the no-man's-land that I live in when I am trapped in between a student's life and a parent's life," Ocon says.

For both women, it's the little things that have changed that are most noticeable. Papers take twice as long to write; invitations to parties have to be turned down. Motherhood means a break with the past, both academically and socially.

Payanzo studies during the middle of the night--typically from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.--while Dylan sleeps. But Payanzo, an anthropology concentrator, is also taking more difficult classes this semester and works five to six hours a week at the Derek Bok Learning Center for Teaching and Learning. No longer a complacent newborn, Dylan will no longer listen patiently as Payanzo reads her French homework to him. Instead, he tears out the pages from her African history textbook.