Secrecy broke a mother’s heart
THELMA emerged from heavy sedation to discover she had given birth to a son.
She never saw him, never heard him and soon after she remembers having been in her private room at the end of a corridor in Baxter House, Geelong Hospital, wearing a tirade of judgment from a nurse.
‘‘ She was standing with her back against a window in her white uniform, berating me,’’ she said.
‘‘ I was disgusting, how dare I, I don’t deserve this baby — that’s why it’s going to be taken away.’’
Being 14, she was unwed and she never saw Matthew for 30 tortured years.
Thelma Adams, of Geelong, is now 53.
After decades of having hidden her story, she is now willing to be known as one of many thousands of women forced to give up their children for adoption during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.
They will be among subjects of a Victorian Government apology next week and Mrs Adams is now leading the formation of a Geelong branch of the Association of Relinquishing Mothers, a support organisation.
Strong demand for the group has surfaced since an article on forced adoptions ran in the Geelong Advertiser in August.
Mrs Adams said her life after the birth had spiralled into sadness, depression and bouts of anxiety and panic attacks.
‘‘For the first roughly 12 months after I had Matt, I would have cried myself to sleep every night,’’ she said. ‘‘My family never knew that.’’
She spoke yesterday of a time when being single and pregnant was so different.
‘‘It was all about, ‘What will the neighbours think?’ back then,’’ she said.
‘‘ Just the shame on the family having a baby out of wedlock was something disgusting. We were all hidden or sent away.’’
Young Thelma was sent to a home in Kew before acute homesickness brought her back to Geelong under a cloak of secrecy.
Her circulated story was t h a t she had gone t o Tasmania to help care for a sick relative.
‘For the first roughly 12 months after I had Matt I would have cried myself to sleep every night. My family never knew that.’
She said the pain from her empty arms would never leave but she married at 17 and in time welcomed three more children.
Mrs Adams said she became obsessed with finding her lost son and eventually did through combined means, including identifying a newspaper birth notice.
‘‘ They were ‘ gifts from God’ or ‘ chosen children’, that’s what they were put down as,’’ Mrs Adams said.
She sent a letter to Matthew’s parents and sent birthday and Christmas cards, but a connection was f i n a l l y made when her daughter turned 21.
‘‘She knew how much sadness it had brought to my life and she wrote him a letter and said how much I’d like to meet him,’’ Mrs Adams said.
‘‘ When he first actually rang my daughter, I just fell to my knees and cried.’’
Mrs Adams and her son remain in contact.
She was a member of a Geelong adoption support group during the 1990s and said revelation of her story to family and friends in the past few years had brought liberation.
She now hopes other longsilent mothers will turn to Geelong’s new ARMS group f or understanding and support.
‘ ‘ I f they knew what a weight it would lift and that nobody would judge them . . . especially not the other birth mothers,’’ she said.
‘‘I think it just could help them, I really do. If they’ve been living in silence and the sadness, just talking about the situation makes you sad but it really helps you.’’
The ARMS Geelong group will have its first meeting on November 10. Interested people can phone Mrs Adams on 5243 8302 or ARMS headquarters on 9769 0232.