WKYT reporter Miranda Combs shares a secret: She has a new baby
Reporter Miranda Combs, a familiar face for WKYT viewers, and her husband, John Harvey, have some big news — they’re adopting a baby girl.
Little Etta Jo was born Oct. 4 in Elizabethtown, Combs said in an interview.
Combs announced the addition to her family in a Facebook post, saying “I’ve been keeping a secret! A month ago we took this perfect baby home. We are forever in awe of her birth mother’s courage to trust our love. It is truly the honor of our lives to welcome Etta Jo to the family.”
Combs said she chose the name Etta in honor of her late stepmother, who loved Etta James, and Jo comes from Combs’ husband’s name, John.
The couple have two sons, Calvin, 9, and McCoy, 6.
“We, as a lot of couples do, had a lot of trouble conceiving our first child,” Combs said Tuesday.
After Calvin’s birth in 2010, Combs said doctors told her her chances of having a second child were “slim to none.”
Combs said she and her husband decided to adopt after that, but they had just finished their home study when she found out she was pregnant with their second son. They put the brakes on the adoption process.
Then last summer, the couple decided they’d give adoption another try.
“I don’t know if it’s being 40 now ... but something came over us,” Combs said. “A lot of the stories that I focus on have been (about) the foster care system, adoption.”
The couple had been warned not to grow frustrated with the process of adopting; getting a placement could take a year to 18 months.
Instead, Combs said, they got a call on Oct. 6, just 18 days after their paperwork was completed, telling them a baby was waiting for them at a hospital in Hardin County.
A young woman who had just given birth two days earlier had sifted through a stack of profiles of prospective adoptive parents and chosen Combs and her husband for her newborn.
Could they be at the hospital in three hours to get her?
“We got in the car with just a car seat,” Combs said. “It was crazy.”
She said she and her husband met the baby’s mother at the hospital, “a wonderful girl, and very smart. She had this beautiful, beautiful little baby.”
The birth mother went home from the hospital that afternoon.
Baby Etta Jo spent one more night in the hospital and then went home with Combs and Harvey the next day.
“Our boys were just beside themselves,” Combs said. “She’s been an absolutely unbelievable blessing in our lives.”
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She said her sons have eagerly taken on their new roles as big brothers and are “so proud of her.”
Combs, WKYT’s investigative/special projects reporter, began working at Lexington’s CBS affiliate in 2002. She spent seven years at the station before leaving in 2009, then returned in 2013.
Combs said that as she was thinking about adoption, she expected to have months to accumulate vacation time so that she’d be able to stay home with a baby for a while.
But since things unfolded so speedily, she had just a week and a half of vacation time available, Combs said. She took two weeks off and then went back to work.
She said her aunt, who also was nanny to both her boys, is caring for baby Etta Jo while she’s at work.
“It was still one of the hardest things to have to leave a two-week-old,” she said.
Combs said none of her or her husband’s coworkers even knew they were adopting. One day they just called in and made an announcement: “We have three kids now.”
Because this is an open adoption, as most adoptions now are, Combs said she has kept in regular contact with the baby’s birth mother, texting with her almost daily.
While that is sometimes difficult to navigate, Combs said they also share a special bond.
“She knows how much I love her daughter, and I know how much she loves her daughter,” Combs said.
Combs said the couple hopes to have a court date for finalizing the adoption in December.
“It’s been an amazing experience,” she said. “When I look at Etta, we would never imagine our lives without her.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 3:10 PM.
