Daughter finds mum forced to give her away on Facebook 50 years later

A family rift forced Pauline, 65, to give her child up for adoption.
A family rift forced Pauline, 65, to give her child up for adoption. Photo credit: Getty

A UK mum searching for the daughter she gave up for adoption 50 years ago was "gobsmacked" to find out her child had already found her on Facebook.

Pauline Pedder, 65, was 14 when she got pregnant, and a family rift forced to give away her daughter, 51-year-old Carol.

Pauline reached out to ITV's Long Lost Family - a UK-based TV show about reuniting lost relatives - to find her daughter. Not only did they find Carol, but discovered she had been following Pauline's Facebook for years.

"I was gobsmacked," Pauline told The Mirror. "I felt sad because we could have had those extra years together, but finally being reunited has more than made up for it."

After the death of her adoptive mother, Carol managed to find Pauline on Facebook with the help of a friend and would visit her page every few weeks.

Carol's partner and friends tried to persuade her to contact her birth mother, but she didn't know how Pauline would feel about her.

Pauline would post pictures of her four children on Facebook, and Carol didn't want to "cause problems" by turning up out of the blue.

Carol, now a mother-of-two, had a happy childhood with her adoptive parents, Michael and Nora.

She first tried to find Pauline, a retired teaching assistant, when she was 18, but the local council told her that all adoption pages had been lost after a fire.

"All I had was her name," Carol said.

When Pauline was 14 and fell pregnant, her dad found out and told her: "If you're ­having a baby, you won't be bringing the baby home here."

After caring for Carol for a month - who at the time she called Louise - Pauline was forced to say goodbye and leave home for the day so her adoptive parents could come and collect her.

"I remember saying to her, 'When you grow up, we might bump into each other in Woolworths and you'll remember me and I'll remember you'," Pauline told The Mirror.

"I went through a lot of heartache when I was younger, wondering where she was. Now, I feel my life is complete."