The Greatest Gift

For years, Stephanie and Mike Lanzerotti struggled to have a baby. When friends stepped in with an unexpected offer, the two couples became more like family.

- JUDI KETTELER

Couples Stephanie and Mike Lanzerotti and Melly Gonzalez De Acevedo and Cody Epperson have the kind of friendship it's a dream to develop, especially as adults: The men became close while working together as engineers, and their wives quickly bonded in their own right. Soon the four were nearly inseparable - they went on vacation together, got to know one another's families and were privy to one another's joys and heartbreaks.

But in the fall of 2021, Melly and Cody offered a gift Stephanie and Mike had never expected one that would change the course of all their lives.

A Surprising Offer

Stephanie and Mike got married in 2016 and "spent a year loving being newlyweds," Stephanie says. The Cincinnati couple were having a great time traveling, going out on the town and cooking delicious meals. Then, when Stephanie got pregnant in the spring of 2018, they were excited and ready to grow their family-but soon devastated when that pregnancy ended in miscarriage. They tried again, and Stephanie had another miscarriage. Since she'd already had two losses, her ob/gyn suggested that she see a fertility specialist to determine whether there was a problem with her eggs or her uterus. Multiple tests, including two painful biopsies of her uterus and a test in which dye was run through her reproductive system to check for blockages, came back normal. "They were afraid my uterus had deteriorated, but that wasn't the case," Stephanie says. In fact, she had the uterus of someone 10 years younger. So what was the problem? Their doctor wasn't sure, but he suggested that they try in vitro fertilization. This process involved stimulating Stephanie's body to produce as many eggs as possible and then retrieving them and combining them with Mike's genetic material to create viable embryos, which were then frozen.