THE PARENT TRIP: Nora and Sam Quinn of Woodlyn

Only the most twisted algorithm would have put these two together: She was a city girl, a blond, blue-eyed extrovert, raised by a philosopher and a hippie. He was a dark-haired, taciturn traditionalist who grew up in the suburbs.

But Nora had just a month left in her Match.com subscription and, with a string of disappointing dates behind her, she paused on Sam's profile. "I was thinking, 'What do I have to lose?' "

The two met for a picnic in Valley Green, followed by a long hike. Sam brought homemade raspberry cookies. "It was the most magnificent, wonderful picnic," Nora recalls. "We left the date, and I got a text message: I forgot to ask you, Would you like to go out again?"

They did - but date No. 2 didn't bode well. Nora suggested a neighborhood spot known for its gourmet pizzas; Sam, it turned out, liked only plain cheese pies. She peppered him with questions; he answered in monosyllables.

They dated some more, they broke up, they got back together. Summer rolled into fall. They each said, "I love you." And in December, when Nora was trying to persuade Sam to accompany her to Italy for a friend's wedding, Sam startled her by suggesting a U.S. road trip instead.

"He said, 'If we're thinking of getting married and having kids, maybe we can go to some national parks.' I thought: He just said 'get married,' 'have kids,' and 'national parks' all in the same sentence. I'm going to marry this man."

On the anniversary of their first date, Nora gave Sam a leather envelope stuffed with 25 blank cards and a promise that, each year for the next quarter century, she would fill one of those cards with reflections and memories of the previous 12 months.

Sam had been nervous all evening - he'd changed his jacket four or five times - and finally hustled Nora out of the restaurant before she could order coffee. He proposed at a mailbox near the car. "I screamed, 'Yes, yes, yes!' before I even saw the ring," Nora recalls.

Both wanted children - their Match.com profiles had made that clear - and they began trying to conceive around the time of their May 2012 wedding. Nora was almost 37 and well-versed in matters of fertility; her mother had attended midwifery school, and Nora herself had been a doula.

By fall, they were diagnosed with "unexplained infertility." That launched months of tests and procedures: four intrauterine inseminations, an IVF cycle that ended in an early miscarriage, a frozen embryo transfer that also ended in an early loss.

Suddenly, these newlyweds were confronting soul-churning questions: How important was it to each of them to have a biological child? What might their lives be like if they weren't parents? Would they consider adoption? "There are all those voices in your head that say, 'Is it worth it? How is this affecting us?' " Nora says. "We didn't spend our first two years of marriage arguing about the laundry. We had different challenges."

They also had disparate ways of coping. Nora tamed her anxiety with yoga and meditation; she sought counsel and companionship through Resolve, an infertility support group, shared her travails on Facebook, and texted constantly with friends. Sam managed his sadness and stress privately.

What united them was determination. "We both really wanted to have a biological child," Sam says. "We felt like we just had to keep going until our options had run out."

They'd scraped together enough savings for one more IVF attempt, and Nora wanted to boost their odds: She cut gluten, dairy, and soy from her diet; learned to run; and completed a 5K race. And then, before they could begin that final cycle, her period was late.

She drove to Sam's office with a drugstore test kit wrapped in a towel. "Look," she told him. The stick said, "Pregnant."

"My first reaction was shock," Sam recalls, "and then joy. It was hard to believe, at first." They waited - elation braided with worry - for the next 14 weeks. Regular ultrasounds reassured them; they now have a catalog of those images, from infinitesimal blob to full-term baby.

Labor was an "epic" four-day adventure; at 41 weeks, Nora tried acupuncture, primrose oil, and finally castor oil to kick-start the process. After hours of rapid contractions but scant progress at Lifecycle WomanCare, a birth center in Bryn Mawr, they transferred to Delaware County Memorial Hospital. Nora's labor continued long enough for her to get an epidural, snatch some sleep, and wake up ready to push.

She remembers Sam and the midwife coaxing, "Come on, Willa," the name they'd chosen after ultrasounds indicated a girl. She remembers seeing the baby's full head of hair and thinking, "The heartburn myth was true."

And she recalls the face of her resolute, introverted husband, his eyes spilling with tears as he glimpsed his daughter for the first time.

Maybe, Nora suggests, opposites really do attract. Or maybe it was the infertility struggle, so early in their marriage, that made them a team.

Now that Willa's here, they face different challenges: Nora's exhaustion and anxiety, some breast-feeding complications, her return to work as director of theater programs at the National Constitution Center. "I had very bad engorgement, and mastitis. Willa had thrush. It's amazing how much more you can weather than you could ever imagine."

But when it's time to write on the blank card for 2015, her indelible moments will surely include these: the first time Sam held Willa outside the hospital, bouncing around with abandon and trying to make his daughter laugh. And a morning when Willa, then 3 weeks old, dozed off after nursing.

"She had a hand wrapped around my finger, and the sunlight was coming in. I remember thinking I could do this forever, sit here at 6 in the morning, looking at my daughter sleeping and smiling. That's worth everything."

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