Last evening was fraught, with a very poorly pony and so I didn’t watch a program, that every season I say I won’t watch. Long Lost Families. But David being thoughtful captured it and I watched it today. I love the program don’t get me wrong but it brings back so many memories of one of the hardest times of my life. There is always a Mum searching for a child who was taken from her for adoption and last night was no exception. The presenters are so good at supporting the people filmed although sometimes I feel the reunions are intrusive but I suppose they are done with the characters permission and would not make life-like stories if they didn’t. But I do find them hard to watch at times. I love seeing people re united, love seeing siblings who had no idea of each other existing, meeting for the first time. But seeing a Mum find her child whom she had adopted sometimes years and years before, meet that child and hug them. I have to fight hard to hold back tears that I have recently discovered I can shed.
Today, with so much help out there for single mums, for those who find themselves pregnant and desperate, I hope more babies stay with their birth mum, have contact with their birth family than in the past. I know it is hard today for people who are of a different generation, to understand the difficulties a woman faced if not married and pregnant. Or pregnant and not able to support a baby due. In my day, in the early ’70’s there was nothing. There was shortage of babies for adoption, especially blue-eyed blonde baby boys I was told at the time, but no financial support and no counselling or help of any kind. If you didn’t have a family around you, as I didn’t, there was only one way, adoption. Many children were ‘removed’ for other reasons, perhaps Mum was poorly and deemed unwell and so unable to care for her child. Sometimes the birth mum was persuaded that in the baby’s best interest she should let her babe go to adoption. Sometimes as in my case, she may have other children or another child and told that she risked losing all of her children if deemed not well enough to care for them. These children are often referred to, as ‘stolen children’.
I was divorced when I became pregnant by someone I trusted and who turned their back on me. I had a 3 year old daughter who was my world, my blessing. Lisa Jayne. I was ill with worry and had no one to help me, I agreed at that stage to have my baby adopted. My son was taken from me in hospital and I went home alone. I soon realised that this was wrong and was distraught. I found him and brought him home. Soon after, I collapsed, the worry, the withdrawal from GP prescribed medication had taken their toll and I was very poorly.GP was called and the wheels were in motion to remove my beautiful blue-eyed baby boy, Jonathan, whom I loved with all of my heart and have him adopted. As sick as I was I fought this, on my own. But I was made to make a choice that was no choice. Either try to keep them both and risk them being taken into care as I was unwell. To let them both be adopted which was unthinkable. Or to allow my son to go for adoption and keep my daughter.I couldn’t lose my daughter, my blessing. As I said, no choice. I had him for a further 2 weeks knowing I couldn’t keep him, a bit like one of the Mums in last nights program. Making it so very hard to let him go. I didn’t ‘give him up’, I didn’t ‘let him go to a family’, he had a family. He had me and Lisa. He was taken and that day left me on the ground outside of my bungalow, screaming after the car drove off with my precious baby.
So you can see why I find this program Long Lost Families hard but hope you can understand why I feel compelled to watch. To see Mums like me reunited with their lost children. Or maybe you can’t. I hopemy daughter watches it and can see how difficult it is for mums to be parted from their children without choice.
One thing in last nights episode that made me think, was how the presenter seemed so surprised that the birth mum had marked her lost baby’s birthday in her diary, every single year. How she would tell her other children about him, how she didn’t go one single day without thinking about him. Why the surprise? She carried him for 9 months, he had heard her heartbeat from the inside. No subsequent children would ever take his place, each child brings their own love. I did all of this. I have always had a photo of my son on my mantle piece. Lisa and Marie have always known about him and in 1992, after Social service apologising for the way I was treated, they located him and we were reunited. I have a relationship with him now but missed so much.
Adoption back then was final. I was asked if I would write my son a letter, that his new parents would give him that when they thought he was ready. They also promised to give him the last set of clothes and bootees I bought him and a soft toy elephant that he pulled from the pram the day he was taken. They did none of this. I understand why. I don’t want to but I do. In the past I have given talks to would be adopters, adopted children and adoptive parents. I always say, let the child know about their history. Tell them about their mum and dad if you know anything. If you bring them, up with love, this won’t hurt your relationship with them, it will only help in the future,especially if they want to contact their family. It will show their child how much you love them. But as I said, I know why the adopters don’t do this. In my own case,Yes they asked for my letter and yes I believe they meant at that time, to give these things to Jonathan, their now son. But as time goes on, the last person they want to think about is me. The baby becomes theirs and they want to have no past for him only the life he has with them. I understand but that doesn’t make it right.Yes he is theirs now but he was mine once and I don’t just go away. The adopters are overjoyed. The baby is hopefully happy and unaware that life is anything but happy. The mum who gave birth to their child is grieving sometimes for the rest of her life. As I said, ‘we’ don’t just ‘go away’.
Modern adoption is supposedly open. I do hope it is. Children have the right to know where they come from, what kind of people their birth families were. They need to know how the adoption came about and why. But above all, they need to be told that their mum loved them. How can being told anything else be good for any child?
I can’t say I am proud because I ‘gave my son up for a better life or to be part of a family’. He had us, we were and now again are, his family. I wish I could but that would mean I did this out of choice and I didn’t. Do I regret this happening, yes and will do for the rest of my life. Yes I am grateful to his parents and glad he was happy but how can I be happy about not having those years I missed with him. So regrets yes but grateful that he understands and doesn’t judge me. Glad that I now have my son back in my life and we share a bond and a love.
There is and always will be a place for adoption and I admire those who choose this path but am glad that now, under the new law, that, every child will have the right to know where they came from.
Why have I written this today?? I have read on Social media, people criticising the program. Don’t watch it if this was you. I have heard people saying it is not true life. It is. That babies were not ‘taken ‘ from their mums, maybe not today, but they were, I know only too well. I read that ‘birth mums have all the support they need and no child needs to go to adoption’. Perhaps that is true today but it hasn’t always been.
I think this progamme is done very well. It provides endings and beginnings for the families involved. Sometimes the person the searched for has died and that is heartbreaking as in last night’s story, but the young woman involved met her sister and that was wonderful to see.
These programs are not for everyone but, for me,they remind me of a horrid time but one I will never forget. But also gives me hope for the families reunited and happy again in the peace of finding their lost loved ones. It can also provide much-needed and overdue endings, in one way or another. How can that be wrong.
I hope the team,keep it up, keep reuniting those who seek the help and have happy ending, even after many many years. Sometimes it happens.
Thanks for reading .x
carolannwright 