My Adoption Story

As I was talking to some customers in my café the other day, I related to them my adoption story after learning they had two adopted children themselves.

According to my Mum, my story started in the cabbage patch in the bottom vegetable garden at the farm. Out of all the babies she found in that cabbage patch that day, my brown eyes shone the brightest, and that was why she chose me and brought me home.

Well, that was the story I was always told from an early age. Mum had shared that picking me out was such a special thing to happen to her and Dad. Therefore, as I grew up, it seemed that that was how all children were adopted.

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The Real Beginning

My adoption story actually started six weeks earlier when my birth mother gave birth to me in an unmarried mother’s home. Her parents forced her to give me up. She didn’t have good health, she was only 16, and her parents didn’t want her to marry my birth father, so she was forced to surrender me for adoption.

More about her version of events later, but as it happened, I was blessed to be given to my adoptive parents—the best that I could have had in the world.

The Long Wait

Mum and Dad had tried to have children for the previous 11 years and had no success. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, there weren’t the extensive tests available to diagnose infertility problems. It was assumed that the woman had a problem, and so Mum had gone into hospital for an exploratory operation, only to find out that there was nothing wrong with her.

It wasn’t until several years later, after still having no success, that it was discovered that Dad had a low sperm count.

After getting the news that I was available for adoption, Mum spent two weeks in hospital with me before she could bring me home. I’m not quite sure why! Talking to Mum about it, it seemed to be the way things were done in those days.

The Cabbage Patch Baby

In the 1950s, a lot of children were put up for adoption, though as I grew older, I didn’t know of anyone else who was a cabbage patch baby like me. Thinking back on it now, I realise the lovely way my arrival into the family was handled by Mum and Dad was an exception to the rule.

As a young child, I spent a lot of time down in that cabbage patch looking for some baby brothers and sisters. I would have picked one out and taken it home in an instant. I can clearly remember having a meltdown when Papa pulled the last of the cabbages out at the end of each season and hoed up the vegetable patch to get it ready for spring planting. Where had all those babies gone?

Mum and Dad then adopted my brother 13 months later to complete our family.

Curiosity Years Later

I never wanted to find my birth parents until the birth of my first granddaughter in 1993. I wondered if my birth mother ever marked my birthday and would like to know that she was now a great-grandmother.

I had been adopted privately through my father’s solicitor, not through the normal government adoption process.

After discussing it with Dad, he thought that he would be able to access my original birth certificate and off he set on a mission to find my birth family.

His original solicitor had passed away, so he contacted his son, and together they searched for my paperwork in a large storage garage. Finally, after a full day moving boxes around, there it was—my birth certificate with only my birth mother’s name on it.

One Phone Call

Dad looked in the phone book and discovered that there was only one name with my birth mother’s surname. He rang the number, and my grandmother answered the phone. Dad talked to her and explained that he was my adoptive father and said that I was interested in contacting my birth mother—her daughter.

She suggested that I write a letter to her daughter, and she would pass it on.

By this time, I was living in Australia, and nearly 12 months later we hadn’t heard anything. The next time I visited New Zealand, I rang my birth grandmother again and asked if she had spoken to my birth mother about me.

She said that she had, and that my birth mother was with a new husband who didn’t know about me, so she wasn’t interested in contacting me.

There I had it. Family secrets in that era were not to be mentioned, and skeletons in the cupboard were not welcome.

Dad was more disappointed than me. My grandmother had made it clear that she had no money, and neither did her daughter, so it was pointless trying to contact them again.

I was disheartened but accepted the rejection—as I already had the best Mum and Dad in the world. This whole exercise wasn’t about replacing them anyway.

Then, A Letter...

Months went by and I received a letter from Dad with a newspaper cutting in it—a death notice for my grandmother and the comment from Dad that that was the end of the line for enquiries.

The Unexpected Twist

Several months passed, and on 1st January 1998, Mum received a phone call from a lady who lived just two streets away from them in a little seaside village where Mum and Dad had retired to.

It was my birth mother—and she wanted to come around and meet Mum and Dad straight away.

She had resolved to go through the box of paperwork left after her mother had passed away and discovered the letter I had sent her—unopened—which she had no knowledge of and which hadn’t been passed on to her.

My grandmother had obviously made the decision that she wasn’t going to deal with any skeletons in her lifetime.

Mum rang me with tears of excitement to tell me the news, and she was able to fill my birth mother in on all that I had been up to for the last 39 years.

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The next phase of my adoption story had just begun.

More about that in another blog – Meeting My Birth Mother.

Watch this space.