I’m so full of joy... I want to shout I’ve met her, I’ve met my daughter
ITV show brings Long Lost Family together after 60 years apart
AMOTHER forced as a teenager to put her child up for adoption has been reunited with her nearly 60 years later, calling it “the best day ever”.
Roslynne Webb was 16 when she became pregnant, and her strict parents decided the child must be adopted.
Looking back, she says: “The love remains. It has been with me since the day she was born. She’s in my heart and my head.
“As teenagers during the 1960s, everything was going on. It was a very wayward kind of living and I was always out and about. I became pregnant.
“When my parents found out about the pregnancy, my mother decided from then on what was going to happen.”
Her mum didn’t want anyone to know about the pregnancy, so Ros was sent almost 100 miles away from her home in Coventry, West Midlands, to a Church of England mother and baby home in London.
She gave birth and was allowed to stay with her child for more than six weeks but was forbidden to take a photo.
Ros adds: “She was just gorgeous. She had a fair, sweet face. It was just the best thing ever.
“I tried to savour every minute because I knew that it wasn’t going to be permanent. You are told to pack things and go into the sitting room and wait. The sister came to me and she said, ‘You can go and fetch the baby now and bring her down’.
“I went up to the nursery, picked her up and I held her.
“I told her I loved her and she would be taken care of.
“I gave her to the sister with all her things. And that’s the last time I saw her.
“It was really hard and it’s still hard now when I think about it, the emotion is raw and the feelings are raw.”
Ros, 76, lives in Cornwall with husband Tony and she never went on to have any more children.
She contacted ITV’s Long Lost Family in the hope they could put her in touch with her daughter, who she called Christine. Thankfully, show hosts Davina McCall
What you did was incredibly brave.. and I’ve always thought that
DAUGHTER LYNDSEY TO HER LONG LOST MOTHER, ROS
and Nicky Campbell and the team working on the series had good news for Ros, tracking down her daughter, Lyndsey, who asked for her surname not
to be shared. She was adopted by a vicar and his wife in Kent and enjoyed a good childhood but had tried to trace her birth mother in the past. On the programme, both women are given lots of inforrmation and photos about each other. Ros even wrote a letter to her 59-year-old daughter telling her: "Knowing that you’re on this Earth brings me to life and is enough. I don’t want to intrude.” However, Lyndsey then agrees to meet up and after a long, tearful hug, Ros says: “You are absolutely beautiful. I can’t believe this is happening. I just want to look at you.”
And Lyndsey replies: “I never thought this would happen. What you did was incredibly brave. And I’ve always thought that. But it wasn’t until I had my first child... I couldn’t imagine giving him up. It must have been so painful.” Ros says: “It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.” She then gives her daughter a gold bracelet, explaining she wasn’t able to buy her one when she was small. Ros adds: “I am full of joy and happiness. I want to stand on that step and shout to everybody, ‘I have met her, I have met my daughter’.”
Lyndsey also reveals she has three children of her own. And at the end of the programme, it is explained the pair have remained in contact and Ros will meet her grandchildren later this year.
Lyndsey said: “It went amazingly well. It was just the best day of my life.”
■ The new series of Long Lost Family starts on Monday night at 9pm on ITV.