'Miracle': UK woman gives birth to 'eBaby' after acquiring insemination kit and sperm online

A 33-year-old woman gave birth to an ‘eBaby’ after buying sperm and an insemination kit online. The woman has named her baby Eden, calling her a “miracle”. Stephenie Taylor from Nunthorpe, Teeside in the United Kingdom, already had a four-year-old son, Frankie, with a former partner. Desperate for a second child and unable to shell out £1,600 (Rs 1.61 lakh) for the procedure at a fertility clinic, Taylor decided to take another route. She bought an insemination kit from eBay and found a sperm donor through the Just A Baby app. The app allows users to find prospective “conception partners” locally or globally. After weeks of messaging, the donor dropped off his sperm at her house in January 2020. Taylor said the man was friendly, adding that the duo “had a cup of tea and chatted about the weather”. She added that the donor was decided after she viewed his profile and believed that their baby would look similar to her son. Taylor then watched a YouTube tutorial to figure out how to use the insemination kit. Two weeks after inseminating herself, she was pregnant. Her baby, Eden, was born on 15 October last year. Taylor regards her as a miracle and was extremely happy with the way her baby came into existence. “If I didn’t have access to all that electronically, then she wouldn’t be here,” she said. Taylor said that she took the decision as she did not want her son Frankie to be an only child. She was also fearful that a new relationship might make her son unhappy and affect his life negatively. She said her mother and sister were ecstatic by her decision, but her father took a while to come around to her decision to a baby via an online sperm donor. He has since hailed the decision as a “brilliant” one. She also said that she would not mind Eden meeting her biological father after she grew older. The donor, who remains anonymous, has said that he would not mind helping Taylor out if she wanted to have more kids in the future.