I found out I was adopted at the age of 7.  I was the youngest of 5 children and my older siblings were all biological children of my parents.  I remember clearly the family around the table at dinner time and all my siblings asking in turn "What time

was I born?".  I too asked this seemingly innocuous question which was followed by a strange silence.  My mum leaned over and said "We'll have a little talk after dinner".  I don't remember too clearly the contents of the talk that followed other than being told that I was special because they chose me when I was one. 

I guess at 7 years of age I understood the concept of what they were saying however I didn't have the level of emotional maturity to consider how this made me feel.  However, my behaviour changed dramatically.  Most noticeably, I started to steal and lie.  Back in the mid 70s when this occurred, adoption was still quite a closeted issue so there wasn't the information available that there is today about how finding out you're adopted can affect the child's psyche.  This behaviour is apparently quite common in adopted children - they steal because they feel they have been stolen from, they lie because they feel that they have been lied to.  My mum didn't know any of this stuff at the time and simply punished the behaviour (she told me she wishes she knew then what she knows now).

Even as I got older heading into my teens, I always felt that because I didn't remember anything about the time before I joined my family, it didn't make any difference to who I was or how I related to others.  However, the older I got the more different I felt from my family (regardless of the fact that they loved me to bits) and my sense of feeling a need to be accepted and to belong led me into destructive behaviours which were an attempt to fit in with, and be accepted by, my peers at school.  My family was very religious and conservative (no pop musice, school dances, non-church friends etc) and I left home at 16 unable to continuing living with the constant turmoil and emotional strain with my mum.  As I got older and commenced romantic relationships, they seemed to have a self-destruct mechanism.  In hindsight, I can now recognise that this stemmed from my fear of abandonment (I'll leave them before they inevitably leave me).

For many years I lived with a huge gap in my personal history.  No-one could tell me in any detail about that first year of my life.  However, laws surrounding the information available to adoptees have changed over the years and around 2005 I applied to DOCs to access information.  Weeks later a huge brown envelope arrived and it was with some trepidation that I ripped it open and started to read.  Contrary to some fantasy I'd held in the back of my head, I was not a one-off mistake regretably surrendered by a woman who subsequently went on to marry have children etc, but rather the oldest of 3 children who were all born out of wedlock and surrendered at birth.  I was surrendered at a week old and fostered to a family who wanted to adopt me.  However, at around 6 months of age I started having seizures.  They took me to the children's hospital in Sydney where I underwent surgery to tap fluid from around my brain, however the siezures continued and they decided to return me as a ward of the state as there was the likelihood of some form of brain damage and they couldn't afford the ongoing medical expenses (the file described my foster mother as being distraught at leaving me).  The good news is that a second operation (a craniotomy to remove a blood clot) was successful and I have had no lasting health issues.  I spent 6 months in a children's home (in & out of hospital a few times) before going to my family when I was one.

In May this year I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl (my first child).  Somewhere in the back of my mind I guess I wondered what sort of feelings this might bring up for me but I was so blissful at being a new parent that I hardly gave it any thought.  Towards the end of last year Adoption Week occured.  I found myself looking up a few things on the web site set up for it and ended up finding some information on how abandonment at birth can affect a baby.  When a baby is born, their transition into the world is softened by the security of hearing those voices that they have heard in the womb and being held in loving welcoming arms.  When this is taken from them, the event (although not conciously remembered) is likely a fearful scary event indelibly imprinted on their psyche.  It went on to describe a myriad of emotions and feelings that can be experienced by the child, much of which I related to.  It then occurred to me, I had gone through this separation not once, but twice (at birth and then 6 months later when I became ill).  I looked at my daughter who was 6 months old and imagined how she would feel if she was ill and in pain and we took her to the hospital and just left her there alone in a strange place with strange people.  Well, that was it.  I started sobbing uncontrollably, grieving for the baby that I had been who had gone through so much, finally allowing myself to recognise the effects of those events so many years ago, which, while consiously unremembered, left lasting effects (mum had told me that as a child, I followed her like a puppy, unwilling to let her out of my sight - I was obviously terrified at being left again). 

I guess the 'advice' part of all this is twofold:

1. If you are adopted, be prepared for unexpected feelings which may arise when you become a parent and make sure you have a good support network.  I found talking about these feelings with my partner and family really helped.  You may see things about yourself through your child that you didn't anticipate.
    
2. If you are the parent of an adopted child, actions speak louder than words.  It would be worthwhile familiarising yourself with common behavioural traits exhibited by adopted children and what they might mean so you can help them work through them in non-destructive ways.  I couldn't understand or verbalise my feelings, yet my actions screamed the fact that I was having difficulty dealing with being adopted and finding my sense of belonging.

PS - I now have a beautiful relationship with my family.  We went through absolute hell for a few years but I now feel completely loved and secure.  The years have given us insight and understanding.