Searching for an adopted child can be difficult and painful, as Sandy Davis knows – and a great joy when mother and son are reunited years later.
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She met her son for the first time this February – 47 years after the government took him away.
“I love him so much,” Sandy said. “I look at him, and think: Oh, I just want to cuddle you – and he’s bigger than I am!”
Sandy will be guest speaker at a special get-together on Tuesday, October 9, held by the Benevolent Society – Australia’s oldest charity – for any and all Armidale locals affected by adoption.
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The Benevolent Society’s Post Adoption Resource Centre (PARC) will host an Adoption Connections Meeting at at the Kent House Community Centre, from 6.00 to 8.30pm.
It’s an opportunity for anyone affected by adoption – adopted persons, parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members – to find out their rights under the law, how to apply for information, search for family members, or have a reunion.
The evening will address issues including:
- How do I find out about my adult child’s adoption?
- How do I search for my adult child / my parents/ my siblings?
- Do I now have the right to find my birth father?
- Post contact – down the track: I need help
- After years of not knowing, I’ve found out I am adopted!
- Doing search and reunion in an online age
As a birth mother whose baby was forcibly removed, Sandy has experienced many of these issues herself.
Sandy fell pregnant as a “very naive little girl” of 18, back in 1970.
Well into the seventies, unmarried mothers were considered immoral, and thousands of babies were marked “BFA” – “Baby for Adoption”, the mother given no say in keeping them.
“In those days, girls like us were shamed,” Sandy said.
“Yet it was us kids who knew nothing about sex, knew nothing about life, really, or how babies were even made. In those days, your mum didn’t even tell you how you got your periods. Nothing was explained. We were seen, but not heard. We were usually the kids who got caught.”
Sandy, brought up in a family of strict Dutch migrants, became a nurse. To widen her career, she transferred to Paramatta District Hospital.
“Having no street smarts,” she said, “I got myself in trouble at the age of 18. My parents being who they are, there was no support in those days for the mothers, so I became homeless.”
She ended up in a dormitory home for unmarried mothers. While pregnant, she worked in a laundry, underweight and fatigued.
Her baby was born prematurely at Crown Street Women’s Hospital, the largest maternity hospital in Sydney.
There, she said, she was “treated like dirt”.
“When I was having him,” she remembered, “the students all came in and watched. You weren’t asked. You were put in stirrups, and they just came and watched you.
“They put you in a room where mothers had their babies. You weren’t put somewhere separate, so when you woke up, you heard all these babies crying. I apparently went off looking for mine. They roused at you; they’d get very angry with you, because you were causing a problem.”
Then her baby was taken away from her – one of tens of thousands of unmarried mothers who never got to hold, or even see, their baby.
A 2012 Senate inquiry, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote, “heard harrowing claims that babies were taken against their mother’s will and that women were pressured, deceived or threatened in order to secure signatures on adoption consent forms”.
“I remembered not wanting to sign the papers,” Sandy said, “because I thought there must be a way that I can keep him. Well, I couldn’t.”
For years, Sandy longed to see her child.
“In the beginning, you couldn’t; the government had set it up so there was nothing you could do. There was no way to trace them. I tried many, many times through the social security government agencies, the hospital, to get records – but with great difficulty.
“Once the government changed legislation, and gave us identifying information, we could then.
“I’d start a search – and think I have no right to him. What if he doesn’t know, and I cause him trauma?”
Last year, Sandy moved to Armidale – and resolved to find her son.
“I decided I’d bite the bullet,” she said, "and I got back in touch with the Benevolent Society. They are absolutely wonderful. They’ve supported me, and they’re still supporting me. I had a lovely case worker. They were mediators, because I didn’t know how to go about it, and I didn’t have the confidence.”
She finally met her son for the first time this February.
“I am sorry I didn’t do this a long, long time ago,” she said. “I should have fought harder to look for Michael sooner, but I’ll work with what I’ve got now.
“I am determined to have a good bond with him, and I will do whatever it takes to learn skills to help to understand him, so that he develops now into a happy man.”
Her advice to other women in her position: Do it!
“Don’t leave it! Go out there, and don’t be frightened. The support’s there; there are organizations out there now, and the legislation protects us now.
“But while you’re going on the journey, have counselling, have support. To do it on your own is just too difficult emotionally.”
The meeting will be held within the Activities Room of the Kent House Community Centre at 141 Faulkner Street, Armidale, from 6.30 to 8pm. Complimentary coffee, tea and snacks will be provided.
The event is free, but bookings are required. For more information and to book to attend, call (02) 9504 6788 or 1300 659 814 or email PARC@benevolent.org.au.