Chapter One - Way back at the beginning

I was born on the 19th of October 1961 at Bethany, Grey Lynn in Auckland, New Zealand.

Bethany Home - Auckland, New Zealand.

5lb 2oz and born a little early.

Ten days after my birth I was taken home by my family.   Mr and Mrs Roberts and their two son's John (aged 7) and Maurice (aged 5).  My real life had now started.  It all was working out just as it was planned.  Problem solved.

These are the facts - and for about 30 years they were all the information that I had.

I am involved in early childhood education, and it was years until it occurred to me that there was a ten day limbo period between my birth and being collected by my family. 

What on earth happened for me during those ten long days? Who cared for me? Who paid attention to me? Did anyone pick me up and hold me?  Those ten days represented all my life and really important days in terms of my development.

Babies in my world are welcome.  Everything is done to make sure the new arrival is prepared for.  No detail is too small.  We wait in anticipation to hear the baby has arrived safely.  We want to see, hold and marvel at the new arrival.  The first few days and weeks are so previous as a new arrival is marveled at, celebrated and welcome into their family group.

It does tear at my heart to think for ten long days there was probably no one in particular looking after me.  I was in a holding pen waiting to be moved on into a family.  Folk used to think babies knew and felt nothing - we now know this is untrue. 

Before I get too gloomy - there is an upside.  

My family talk of the visits from the Salvation Army officers who came to check out hte house.  John and Maurice talk about being threatened within an inch of their lives to behave well.  Mum talked about the horror of finding Maurice telling 5 year old jokes to all who would listen - Fatty and Skinny up at tree, Fatty falls down in a bucket of wee!

I never asked about the detail of how a baby was chosen or the day they took me home - my folks would have shared this with me, I just never asked. But I do know there was joy and pride and love. That warms my heart.

If I get to talk with my birth mother, this will be an important question to ask.  Was I  whipped away, unseen or did she get some time to be with me?

The Salvation Army ran several Bethany Homes in New Zealand, all have closed now. They offered private maternity care for some (the grand and the good?) but were well known for taking in pregnant unmarried women and arranging the subsequent adoptions of their babies. 

Places like Bethany arose as a practical solution to address the problem of growing numbers of illegitimate babies.  Helping couples who got caught our between the swinging 50's and 60's and the advent of reliable and available contraceptives and domestic purposes benefits. 

Adoption continues to be a socially constructed solution to resolve issues.  The advent of open adoptions suggests we have grown up a little bit and the need to keep secrets and hide pregnancies away in places like Bethany have disappeared.

I find these photos of babies at Bethany around the time I was born, really confronting.  Rows of bassinettes, litters of babies.... We were aghast when we saw the orphanages of Eastern Europe in the 1980's but just a few years earlier the same reality played out in our own back yard.   

A person could get all bent out of shape about what went on but I believe, amid the moralising and evangelising, that people were doing their best.

As a child of the 1960's, adoption was rife.  I knew a lot of kids who had been adopted, it was spoken about openly at home, it didn't strike me as odd or worthy of further consideration until years later.

Being adopted has been like an old polaroid photo (that shows my age!) - the picture has slowly emerged over a long period of time. I have had a multitude of thoughts and feelings about it - sometimes its been far from my mind but often it has been up front and personal.  

One thing that I feel shows great maturity on behalf of my folks, is that having watched several other family members struggle with adoption and finding out by chance they were adopted, they were up front from the get go.

They talked openly about the desire to adopt a baby, when I first came home they introduced me as their adopted daughter.  No secrets - openness and honesty.

All my life my parents were happy to talk about my adoption.  It wasn't a dirty secret.  I look back now and wish I had asked more questions but at the time it just wasn't important and I didn't need to know.  Dang!