Once upon a time, in a rented attic apartment in a frigid northern city, a five pound baby girl was born in secrecy to a very young mother.
Within two hours of birth, that baby was abandoned.
She was left in an unheated hallway blocks away – naked, crudely cut umbilical cord tied with a string, wrapped in a sheet, left in a cardboard box.
Upon returning home, a resident of this building found the tiny baby, and called the police. The police took the baby to the hospital, where she was examined and pronounced to be a:
Normal female infant. Adoptable.
That’s how my story began.
That is who I was, when I came into this world.
Everything boiled down to those four words because nothing else was known about me. No note or details were left, no clues as to who my parents were or where I came from. So they looked at this baby, and they counted toes and checked breathing, and in absence of any other information they verified what they could.
Normal female infant. Adoptable.
Following medical checks, I was taken to an orphanage – yes, an actual honest-to-God orphanage. They were falling out of use at that time (with foster care being favored) but some did still exist.
That orphanage is where I spent my first few months of life, until a family could be found for me.
By 6 months old, I was in my adoptive home, the youngest child of thrilled parents. I had a typical suburban middle-class childhood with a dog and a backyard, lots of neighborhood kids, piano lessons, road trips, church on Sundays and grandparents living nearby. I went to college, where I met a guy. We got married and bought a house, and our kids have had a middle-class childhood with lots of dogs and a big backyard. I worked in a first responder job for a decade. After having kids, I started a business, and I work from home.
From that rough beginning, I’ve done alright.
I have a great life. I’m capable, healthy, and reasonably intelligent. I am not afraid of hard work. I’m adventurous, creative, and pursue many different talents and interests. I am always learning, always trying to improve myself.
I’m tenacious, and that trait more than any other has led me to accomplish a lot. And that includes solving the puzzle of how, exactly, a five pound baby girl ended up abandoned in a cold apartment hallway, all those years ago.
Things started out pretty damn rocky for me. The odds of survival of an abandoned baby are less than 50% . That’s true even when they are placed in an area where they are likely to be found. No prenatal care. Prematurity. Poor or unhygienic birth conditions. No medical care post delivery. The odds are stacked against these babies even before they are dumped alone.
With the blessings of a thoughtful adoption agency, a loving supportive home, hard work and a little luck, I made it a long way from “Normal female infant. Adoptable.”
This is who I became.
I’m a wife and a mother, a daughter, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, a friend. I am obsessed with family tree building, genetic genealogy, historical family research, and the various sides of complex topics like adoption, adoption reunion, abandoned babies and DNA testing. I look forward to sharing what I have learned and how I have grown as I’ve journeyed through life and explored these topics.
The medical form this image is snipped from was in my orphanage records, which were released to my family at our request when I turned 18.
