“Where Do Babies Come From?”
The Stepp family and their little miracle, Norah; Berea, KY

Dear Norah,

Someday in the (hopefully far distant) future, you are going to ask the question that strikes fear in to the hearts of parents everywhere. “Where do babies come from?” Now for most parents, after some blushing and stammering, there is a fairly simple answer to this question. In our case, it’s a bit more complicated.

How do we explain to you that no matter how much they wish and pray, some Mommies and Daddies can’t have a baby without help? And that make them very sad and scared. Your Mommy and Daddy were lucky enough to find a wonderful doctor named Dr. Akin who wanted to help them. The first thing we tried was called IUI, where the doctor puts Daddy’s sperm in Mommy’s uterus at just the right time. Mommy had a baby grow in her right fallopian tube before we came to Dr. Akin, and now that baby is in Heaven, and Mommy doesn’t have that tube anymore, so we could only do the IUIs when Mommy had eggs on the left side. We tried IUI 6 times, but it didn’t work. Mommy and Daddy cried so hard because they were afraid they would never have a baby!

The next thing we tried was something called IVF, where Mommy’s eggs and Daddy’s sperm are put together in a lab and then put back into Mommy’s uterus. Dr. Akin said that we would use a medicine called BRAVELLE^® so that Mommy would make lots of eggs. Mommy and Daddy were very nervous, since we only got 6 eggs to fertilize and none of them could be frozen in case it didn’t work. So we put back the best 3, and hoped for our miracle.

The nest 2 weeks were the longest of our lives, as we waited to find out if we were going to have a baby. Mommy cheated and took 2 tests at home on 2 different days before her blood test, and both of those tests told her she wasn’t going to have a baby. She cried again, sure that the IVF hadn’t worked. Finally, the 2 weeks were up and Mommy had a blood test in the morning. When she called the nurse in the afternoon, the nurse said the words Mommy and Daddy had been waiting years to hear: “Congratulations! You’re pregnant!” Which meant that Mommy and Daddy were finally going to have a baby! Well, Mommy and Daddy cried SO HARD again…but this time it was because they were so happy!

How do we explain to you that we spent the next 9 months more excited, thrilled, and scared about something that most “regular” parents can ever imagine? How do we explain the immense feeling of love we felt the moment you arrived? And that you were oh-so worth everything we went through to get you here? Mommy’s friends laugh at her when she tells them she doesn’t really remember what all of the shots, tests, and procedures were like when she did her IUIs and IVF…but that’s not the part that matters to Mommy. Mommy would do it all over again in a heartbeat, and in fact, she has…Mommy and Daddy want you to have a sister or a brother. So, while she’s writing this, Mommy is again in that long 2 weeks, waiting to find out if an IVF worked! This time we used a few different medications: BRAVELLE^®, REPRONEX^®, and MENOPUR^®, and we got a lot more eggs!

So, though we know we have a while before you will ask us that complicated question, we are trying to some up with an answer that won’t confuse you too much, but still let you know just how very much Mommy and Daddy would have done to get you here. For now, my simple answer to the question, “Where do babies come from?” is: they grow from the love in Mommy’s and Daddy’s hearts.

With all our love,
Mommy and Daddy