Eileen Taylor-Baines choked up as she recalled the first letter she received from her daughter 30 years after she gave her up for adoption.
"She opened it by saying, 'I have thought about you every day of my life since I was 10 years old'," the Mount Maunganui woman said.
Mrs Taylor-Baines, who was raised in Ireland, was prompted to tell her story as an inspiration to others after seeing the critically acclaimed movie Philomena, which is based on true story of a mother's 50-year search for a son she had to give up for adoption because he was conceived out of wedlock.
Mrs Taylor-Baines was 19 when she fell pregnant with her first daughter and was sent away to a Protestant-run mother and baby home, similar to the one in Philomena, in Dublin six weeks before she was due to give birth in 1964.
"It was the worst disgrace you could ever bring on yourself or on your family to fall pregnant as a young girl," she said. "It was a very severe place. You had to do housework all day."
The young mothers were made to stay at the home for two months after giving birth to look after their children.
"No one ever touched those babies apart from their mothers," Mrs Taylor-Baines said. "You fed them and loved them and bathed them and cuddled them knowing that at two months it was going to be the end.
"Then you waited for the big black car to come up the drive and you knew they were coming for your baby. You had to physically hand the baby over and watch them carry it away."
Mrs Taylor-Baines was always hopeful they would be reunited and updated the adoption agency with her details every time she moved.
Thirty years later a friend gave her the contact details for a new adoption agency and she touched base. Three months later her daughter, Wendy Whelan, decided it was time to find her birth mother and approached the same agency.
Mrs Taylor-Baines was shocked to find her daughter had been named Wendy, the same name she had given her second daughter years later. She vividly remembers the first phone call she made to her in England.
"I couldn't speak and I squeaked out, 'Wendy?' and she went, 'Who is this?' I couldn't speak again and I finally got out, 'This is your mother'."
Wendy was just as shocked by the call. "I actually slid down the wall. I was eight months' pregnant and thought I was going to give birth," she said.
Ms Whelan, who is on holiday in Tauranga, told the Bay of Plenty Times she had thought about her birth mother every day since she was matter-of-factly told she was adopted when she was 10.
"From then on I wanted to find her because I just felt like I didn't belong and I didn't fit in. I couldn't have done it while [my adopted mother] was still alive but when she died I thought it was time to find her."