A single mother was shocked to discover the two children she had adopted a year apart are actually related.
Katie Page from Colorado, America, decided to take life in a different direction when her marriage ended in her early 30s.
Buying a new house and changing job, Katie also decided to look into fostering children after she received an email from her local church about foster care.
Writing in a post for Love What Matters, Katie explained how a meeting she attended about fostering gave her ‘chills’ also ‘pulling her heart in a way [she] couldn’t stop thinking about’.
After ‘lots of contemplation’, Katie decided to pursue fostering, filling out an application in 2015 setting her off on this new journey.
A year later Katie realised she was keen to adopt, wanting to be ‘a child’s forever home’ and soon afterwards she took in a four-day-old baby boy who had been abandoned at a hospital and had drug exposure.
Naming him ‘Grayson’, Katie explained how she looked after the boy for 11 months while care workers searched for his biological parents.
She wrote:
The information left at the hospital never led to anyone. No one answered the ads posted in the newspaper or came back to the hospital in search of the boy that had been left that day.
Part of me was relieved that no one came forward, so that he would be mine forever with no opposition. But there was always a pit in my stomach about one day having to tell my son no one showed up at his termination hearing. No one came looking.
And so on the day Grayson turned 11 months old, he legally became Katie’s son; something which broke Katie’s heart with ‘both joy and sadness’.
Although Katie wanted to expand her family further, she decided to wait ‘at least a year and a half before taking in another longer term placement’.
But less than two weeks after Grayson became legally her child, Katie received a call about an ’emergency placement’ from her case worker.
A four-day-old baby girl, also with drug exposure, had been left abandoned at the same hospital as Grayson and needed a placement that afternoon.
Despite feeling ‘overwhelmed by the thought’, Katie said yes to taking the girl in and four hours later she arrived at Katie’s home.
When the baby had been dropped off, Katie noticed something odd writing:
As I reviewed the bracelets on the baby girl, I saw the first name of her mother matched the name Grayson’s mother had given to the hospital. ‘Hmmm, that’s funny their mums have the same name.’ I told my roommate.
I continued to review the discharge papers from the hospital and when I came across the date of birth for her mother I had to take a second look. It looked familiar. I asked my roommate to watch the children for a moment and I went to find Grayson’s paperwork.
‘Hmmm that’s really odd the date of birth is only one day different than Grayson’s mothers.’ My roommate and I were looking at each other wondering if we were thinking the same thing. ‘Could they have the same mother?’
Messaging her case worker to ask if it was possible the children had the same mother, a meeting was arranged with the baby girl’s biological mum.
Upon meeting her, Katie knew instantly she was looking at Grayson’s biological mother, especially when the woman told her she had ‘one more child than the county was aware of’.
The week after the encounter Katie’s case worker met the woman and came to the same conclusion.
Their suspicions were confirmed when they discovered the last name the woman gave at both Grayson’s and the baby girl’s births.
Katie couldn’t believe the two children she had taken in were siblings writing:
What if I had said no? What if I had said yes to one of the other placements I had been asked to take just days before? What if Baby Girl had gone to another family?
We would have never found her or Grayson’s mother. The connection would have never been made! I could not believe the miracle that had just happened.
It is a sheer miracle, once in a lifetime chance… call it what you will, but it is amazing that my children found each other.
On December 28 2018 Katie’s baby girl, now named Hannah, joined the family being officially adopted.
And the story isn’t over yet as Katie took in a third baby boy who Grayson and Hannah’s biological mother gave birth to last year with plans to adopt him in 2019.
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