A reunion and a secret
I found my birth mum but sensed there was something she wasn’t telling me
Hearing a knock on the front door, I leapt to my feet, my legs shaking with nerves. This is it, I thought. It was March 2009 and, aged 21, I was about to meet my birth mum.
I’d been adopted at 2 months old.
Had wonderful parents, Barbara, then 51, and Warren, 55.
‘I just want to know how I came to be here,’ I told them when I was 18.
They understood it was just curiosity.
I wanted to thank my birth mum for going through with the pregnancy, too.
‘She’s the reason I’m here,’ I told Mum and Dad.
It’d been surprisingly easy to track her down.
Through the adoption agency I learnt she was called Tonya Glasby, then 34.
I called her and we spoke over the phone to begin with, and she’d been keen to meet me.
And, now, here she was.
Opening the door, I gasped.
‘It’s like looking in the mirror,’ I laughed to the lady smiling back.
Dark hair, olive skin and just 5ft, I was like her clone.
‘We look so much alike,’ Tonya agreed.
My nerves melted away as we hugged.
Sitting on the sofa, I handed her photos of me growing up.
I had so many questions, blurted out everything all at once.
But Tonya seemed to be overwhelmed.
I already knew I’d been born two months premature. Weighed just 3lb.
I’d had dislocated hips and club feet. Had been on life support for months, then had to wear a body cast to fix my hips.
‘Were the doctors able to help you?’ Tonya asked.
‘Yes,’ I smiled, explaining how medics had corrected my birth defects and I just needed regular check-ups.
‘I’ve had a wonderful life,’ I told her.
Tonya had brought her husband and my three halfsisters along. ‘It’s so good to meet you all,’ I beamed.
We had a lovely afternoon – but, after, there was still so much I wanted to know.
Tonya had been just 13 when she’d had me, didn’t know who the father was.
‘Perhaps you should meet again just the two
I wanted to thank her. She’s the reason I’m here
of you?’ Mum suggested.
So, a couple of months on, Tonya came round again.
Handing her a necklace and ring decorated with my aquamarine birthstone, I waited for her to open the card.
As she read, her face crumpled. She began to cry.
Thank you for choosing life for me, I’d written.
I just wanted her to know how grateful I was.
But she seemed to be distraught.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ she sobbed, pain in her eyes.
I listened as Tonya explained how terrified she’d been when she’d fallen pregnant at 13.
‘My mum told me my only option was to have an abortion,’ she wept.
So, at 20 weeks, Tonya had a termination at a clinic.
Only, just a week later, at a check-up, her doctor found that she was still pregnant.
‘You had a twin, a boy,’ she wept to me now.
But while he’d been aborted, I’d survived.
My mouth felt dry with shock as I listened.
Her parents insisted she went back to the clinic.
Only, another abortion couldn’t be carried out.
‘The amniotic fluid in your sac was leaking and doctors warned me I’d soon give birth,’ she said.
Two months later,
I was born.
‘Afterwards, I had to go straight home and act as if nothing had happened,’ Tonya said.
Tonya knew I’d been born with disabilities and that I was being put up for adoption, but that was all. For a while, I was silent. Struggling to take it in. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ Tonya begged.
She told me she wouldn’t blame me if I never wanted to see her again.
I suddenly felt like I was in a film.
Out of all the things I’d imagined about my birth story, surviving an abortion hadn’t been one of them.
I thought of my twin brother and my heart ached. Tonya looked devastated. But she’d been a child herself – none of this was her fault.
‘Of course I forgive you,’ I told her.
We sat together for a long time, hugging and crying.
Since then, me and Tonya and my half-sisters have stayed in touch.
My doctor said my birth defects were unlikely to have been the direct result of the abortion, but because I’d been born prematurely.
That gave Tonya some comfort.
I now have three stepchildren with my husband David, 46, and we have a daughter, Sadie-June, 8.
I’ve written a book about my experience.
I’m so glad I met my birth mum and learnt the truth.
As shocking as it is, I know that I survived for a reason.
● Survivor by Claire Culwell (£14.99, Penguin Random House) is available at amazon.co.uk from 27 April.