A US single mother was shocked and surprised when she found out the two babies she adopted a year apart were actually related.
Katie Page from Colorado changed her life when she divorced her husband in her early 30s. She moved houses and changed jobs and then decided to become a foster parent after her local pastor asked her if she wanted to help out.
After fostering four children she realised that she might want to adopt a child and give them a permanent home.
In 2016, Page's dream became a reality when she received a call about a 4-day-old baby boy who was dropped off at a local hospital.
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Advertise with NZME."I immediately called her back and said 'I want him! Give me five minutes and please don't call anyone else'," Page wrote in her blog LoveWhatMatters. The caseworker said the child was likely a foster-to-adopt situation.
"The minute I saw him in the hospital, I fell in love," she recently told Good Morning America. "He's so calm and sweet."
The boy who Page named Grayson spent 11 months at her home while case workers tried for find his birth parents though newspaper ads. However, no one claimed the boy.
"Part of me was relieved that no one came forward, so that he would be mine forever with no opposition," the new mother wrote. "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."
Page legally adopted Grayson when he was 11 months old after the courts terminated his birth parents' rights.
Less than two weeks later, Page received another call from a caseworker about a baby girl who was dropped off at the same hospital as Grayson.
"I could feel the fear inside me and the chills in my body," Page wrote. "I was overwhelmed at the thought. Yet the feeling also told me to keep listening and to consider this placement."
When the baby girl arrived at Page's home less then four hours later, the single mother noticed something peculiar about the girl's bracelet.
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Advertise with NZME."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," she wrote.
Page then decided to review the hospital discharge papers and noticed that the birth mother also had the same birth date as Grayson's birth mother. This made her wonder if the two children could possibly be related.
"To give some context, Grayson is half African American with beautiful darker skin and dark curly hair," Page wrote. "Baby Girl has a pale white skin tone with straight red-blonde hair. From first glance the children looked nothing alike."
Page eventually contacted their birth mother to find out the truth and the woman admitted to having a boy before giving birth to a girl.
Then the caseworker met with the birth mother and confirmed what Page originally guessed, the two children were half-siblings.
"What if Baby Girl had gone to another family?" Page asked in her blog post.
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Advertise with NZME."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."
The young girl, who Katie later named Hannah, officially joined the family in December 2018.
"[Hannah] is the opposite of Grayson," Page said.
"He loves to chill and she's a wild thing. As soon as I started figuring it out that she was his sibling, I said, 'Absolutely, [I'll adopt her].' Once I took in Grayson and I accepted being his mom, I accepted his family."
However, the family is still growing as Page is no now hoping to adopt a third child, a boy the same birth mother recently gave birth to, in the coming months.
"We are fostering [the young boy] with great hopes to adopt in 2019," Page wrote.
