70 Years After Doctors Said Her Baby Died, This Old Woman Received A Life Changing Phone Call

70 years after doctors said her baby died this old woman received a life-changing phone call [Music] at the age of 88 genevieve purinton was living a fairly solitary life at her retirement home in florida all of her immediate family had sadly passed away and she believed that the only child she'd given birth to had died soon after delivery almost seven decades ago but then she received a note that would finally help her to uncover the truth as a teenager puritan became pregnant with a married man she was single and yet to graduate from high school back then in the late 1940s it was frowned upon for a woman to have children out of wedlock as a result it appeared that puritan's mother and father didn't approve of the situation in which she'd found herself at just 18 years of age puritan gave birth to a daughter in indiana in 1949 however she would never get to hold her little baby that's because nurses at the hospital informed her that she'd died in december 2018 purinton told nbc news i asked to see the baby and they said she died that's all i remember at the time puritan had no reason to doubt what hospital workers were telling her they'd said outright that her baby had passed away so it didn't cross her mind to ask to see her daughter's birth certificate instead she'd accepted the fact that she'd lost her child and focused on getting her life back together without her baby girl puritan found herself feeling isolated her mom had warned her that her dad would kill her if she returned home so she instead went to live with her grandmother she finished high school before leaving her home state of indiana for a new life in florida pierson reportedly arrived in her new home without knowing a soul however what she lacked in company she made up for in grit and conviction she carved out a life for herself in tampa but she would never go on to have any more children following a hysterectomy to treat a tumor despite that health scare puritan was destined to live a long life however the downside to that was watching all of her eight siblings pass before her as of december 2018 puritan was 88 and believed that she was the only one remaining in her family consequently she lived a simple existence at a care home in north tampa as piernton wilde away the days at her assisted living facility she had no way of knowing that she would soon discover a new relative one which would ultimately lead her to a whole new side of her family that she never even knew existed it all began in september 2018 when pearson would sanded the phone number of a lady called connie multrip multrip was raised in santa barbara california after being adopted as a baby she was always aware that her parents weren't biologically related to her nevertheless she loved hearing about how they came to welcome her into their family and the fact that they chose her to be their own no doubt made her feel special maltrip revealed how her parents would talk openly about her adoption in 2018 she told inside edition my favorite bedtime story was how my parents walked up and down the halls of the hospital looking at all the babies until they found me and then they stopped it was sweet however multrip's happy bubble was not to last sadly her adoptive mother died when moltrip herself was just a small child her father subsequently remarried but he too fell ill and soon passed away as well as a result multrip had lost both her adoptive parents by the age of five 2018 multrip's own daughter bonnie chase revealed to cnn her adoptive mother died of cancer and shortly after her adoptive father was diagnosed with a heart condition plus to make matters worse moltrip's stepmother was reportedly abusive as such hers was not the happiest of childhoods with no major maternal influence in her life multrip supposedly always fantasized about meeting her real mom and she did actually look for a biological mom during her 30s but her efforts proved fruitless eventually it seems life got in the way of moltrip's quest to find her family as an adult multrip settled in richmond vermont enjoying a career as a nurse and then a massage therapist she had just one daughter bonnie chase who herself went on to have two children as a result by the time she was in her late 60s multrip only had three blood relatives that she was aware of but all that was set to change in 2017 when chase bought moltrip a dna testing set as a christmas present after all she thought her mom might like to learn more about her genes however chase had been interested to learn more about her own heritage so she also got a kit for herself could relate to moltra like her mom there was a whole side to chase's family that she didn't know in 2018 chase explained to yahoo i never met my own biological father and growing up it was just me and my mom i remember mom trying to find her birth mother and it was hard to see her go through that but while chase and moltrip both longed to find out more about their family backgrounds neither of them took the dna kits seriously chase would later tell nbc news it was just a cool christmas present in fact moltrip felt so laxed towards her test that it took her some time to even send it off for analysis but if multrip had known how the test would change her life she might have completed it sooner she explained to cnn it took me a while to use it but when i finally got the results i went from having only three known relatives a daughter and two grandchildren to 1 600 relatives i was floored among the relatives that the dna kit had linked mole trip to was a long-lost cousin who introduced her to her biological family for the first time the pair struck up a conversation and moltrip quizzed her newfound relative on her family tree that's when things took an unexpected turn multrip knew the name of her biological mother and so she divulged this information to a relative online recalling what happened next moltrip told cnn i told her my mother's name was genevieve purinton and my cousin said oh that's my aunt and she's still alive living on her own i couldn't believe it in a shocking twist it turned out that moltrip was the baby that parenting believed she'd lost in 1949 it seems that her nurses had lied to her the child hadn't died at all instead she'd been taken to an orphanage ready to be adopted into a new family later multrip reflected on why she may have been taken from her mother in such a callous way she told cnn because she was an unwed mother she was told that i had died she continued her life not knowing i was still alive and sadly purinton was not alone in this kind of experience ann fessler is the author of the 2006 book the girls who went away in it she explored the pressure that pregnant single women felt to give up their babies during the period between the close of world war ii and the time in which abortion became legal in 1973. she interviewed over a hundred women who'd begrudgingly surrendered their children to protect themselves from the shame of being a single mother during the 1940s and 1950s illegitimacy was usually considered the woman's fault a symptom of her psychological shortcomings as a result it was often the view that it was best for them to be separated from their babies often unmarried mothers had little option but to hand their offspring over receiving no support from society to help them raise their children themselves forced adoptions were disturbingly commonplace in the era in which puritan gave birth to moltrip and the fact that she was told her child had actually died is particularly grim assessment of social attitudes at the time as puritan herself put to the daily mail in 2018 things were different back then as for moldrep it seemed that now at age 69 she was finally going to meet her biological mom this was to be a reunion she'd been dreaming of since she was just a child as maltrip's own daughter chase told nbc news she would fantasize about her mother rescuing her since she was five years old it's truly her lifelong dream after receiving puritan's contact details from her cousin online multrip reached out to her biological mother leaving the ball firmly in purinton's court she simply sent her a card with her phone number on it that way puritan could get in touch with her long-lost daughter if and when she felt ready the moment that multrip had waited for most of her life came on september 8 2018 it was then that she answered the phone to find puritan on the other end finally she could hear her biological mother's voice for the first time in her living memory and it seems that moltrep believed fate played a part on that special day in her interview with cnn multrop revealed i was at church that day and i never want to leave early but that day i did literally 20 minutes after getting home my mother calls the conversation had been almost 70 years in the making and so the pair had a lot to catch up on recalling that first phone chat multrip told nbc news how parents had told her i think i'm your mother then recalling the atmosphere of the call moltrip added you could have heard a pin drop she wanted to remember if i knew my original name margaret and mitch as it happened she did the initial conversation was to be the start of a meaningful relationship between moltrip and puritan indeed they subsequently began calling regularly and it was during these ketchups that the two women realized just how much they had in common as a result moltrip was in no doubt that she'd finally found her mother jokingly moltrip said of puritan she couldn't deny me if she wanted to we look exactly alike with the same facial features bad knees and we both had heart attacks and strokes she added my mom has always wanted to be a nurse but she couldn't afford school so she became a cook i was a nurse for 34 years and my passion is cooking multrip finally got the chance to meet her mother at puritan's retirement village in florida in december 2018. she later recalled the moment that she first set her eyes on her biological mom to inside addition in her words i walked into her retirement home and i knew it was her because she walked with a walker moltrip revealed there was only one woman there with a walker she turned around and it was just like looking in a mirror i looked just like her we just walked over to one another and both of us started crying and from there it seems that there were a lot more tears shed chase's recollection of the meeting echoed in her mother's memory she too described an outpouring of emotions as moltrip and purent and reconnected she told nbc news we're criers we'd just cry a lot there are a lot of tears and there's been a lot of tears the entire time since then it's been really amazing between her tears moltrip was able to fill purinton in on the 69 years since they parted this included telling her mom that she was also a grandmother and great-grandmother in 2018 multrip told fox13 it's been a lifetime of wanting this i remember being five years old wishing i could find my mother given the positive experience moltram had in finding purinton she encouraged others to seek out their own biological parents with that in mind she told cnn not everybody has this kind of outcome when looking for their parents but i recommend you give it a try you don't know what'll happen commenting on the heartwarming story a spokesperson for ancestrydna the company which manufactured the dna kit used spoke to nbc news jasmine yemen has said we're thrilled that ancestry was able to play a part in helping to connect genevieve purinton with her daughter after 69 years we wish her and her family the best and that this is only the beginning of an enduring relationship and multrip's journey of discovery into her biological family didn't end with meeting puritan that's because she also had plans to connect with her two half-siblings on her dad's side in the month after her reunion with her mom as such moltrip was watching her family grow before her eyes for multrip's daughter chase the journey that the dna kits she'd bought for herself and her mom had taken them on and been life-changing she told cnn we knew nothing about our family it was just us three now through ancestry we see we're related to over 4 000 people