THE MOMS ON A MISSION TO SAVE "FROZEN CHILDREN"

They believe embryos are living beings waiting to be rescued. And they'll do whatever it takes to do just that.

- BY LORENA O'NEIL

Even before she could read, Andrea Darby knew that she wanted to be a mother. In kindergarten, she’d gone to her Tennessee elementary school dressed up as a mom for career day, with her light brown hair in curlers, holding a baby doll. Years later, as she was finishing up high school, she still had motherhood on her mind.

“I knew I wanted to be a mom, and my parents were like, ‘No, you need to find a degree in something you can actually have a job in,’” Andrea, now 33, says, laughing at the memory while on a video call from her Alabama home on a Monday afternoon in December. Andrea enrolled in nursing school at Freed-Hardeman University, a small Christian college in West Tennessee. There, as a freshman, she met junior and student body president Nicholas Darby. In July 2013, two months after she graduated college, they got married and she joined Nicholas in Alabama where he was in medical school studying to become a family medicine doctor. About a year later, Andrea stopped taking birth control. A year after that, she still wasn’t pregnant. The couple decided to do some tests and eventually discovered Nicholas was infertile.

They considered their options: advanced testicular mapping and IVF, sperm donation, or adoption, but they decided to hold off. They had hesitations about IVF, Andrea says, because they believe embryos are life from the moment a sperm is fused with an egg and would never feel comfortable discarding them; something they feel devalues the sanctity of life. They also have significant reservations about genetic testing. “We’re members of the Church of Christ and we thought, God has a plan,” says Andrea, in her light Tennessee twang. Her father is a minister and Nicholas’s dad is an elder at their church. Their shared commitment to their faith is part of what drew them to each other. “We don’t want to just try to make everything fit the way we want it to.”