‘Why I Handed Back My Adopted Babies… When I Got Pregnant’

Ali, 35, had always been maternal and wanted a child, but after checking in with the doctor, she and husband, Michael, turns out to be infertile. It is impossible to naturally conceive, so after deliberate thinking, the two decided to adopt.

These two gingerbread men were meant for the twin boys.

This is a story from December 2014. Ali was so happy to know when she got to adopt two cute twin boys and began her regular visits to the foster home for six weeks. The boys were eight months old. “They were chunky and squidgy, with huge brown eyes. Absolutely gorgeous,” says Ali.

She was supposed to be excited about her new boys and while everything seems to be going as she had wanted them to, she felt like something was missing. She wasn’t “getting it”.

The school librarian recalls those days when she was supposed to be playing with her twin boys, “It felt like I was playing — that it wasn’t real. What made it worse was that Michael bonded with the babies immediately. He already felt like Daddy.”

Ali with her three-year-old Jacob.

They bought a new double buggy for the boys and she had been obsessed overriding it with them. During her first visit to the park with the boys and the buggy, here’s what happened.

Ali is again, pregnant with a daughter, against all odds.

“It sounds daft now, but so much effort had gone into getting the perfect buggy. It was an iCandy double and cost more than £1,000. But even when I was sitting with my beautiful buggy containing these gorgeous babies, I just wanted the process to stop. I’d never felt so lonely in my life.”

It wasn’t until her husband decided to beg her to go to the doctor. How shocked was the couple when they were told that Ali was pregnant with Jacob! There were tears of joy, but Ali began to understand the reason for her feeling detached to the boys.

A happy family of three – Ali, Michael and their biological son, Jacob.

Jacob was born on October 2015 after Ali suffered through bouts of depression.

I think it was my body saying: ‘Concentrate on your baby.'” The evening the couple found out they will have a baby boy, they left the twin to the foster care. While they weren’t legally parents, they were so close to being one.

Despite their wish to begin a family, the pair was declared impossible to conceive naturally.

Ali still suffers from the fall-out depression, constantly wondering when she sees twin boys of that age whether that’s them. The twin eventually found a forever home and hopefully, were too young to be emotionally let down. While she never talked about it much with Michael, she does have one last wish for the boys.

She left them a note and upon reading it, hopes that they will one day come to find her. This is what the note says:

“That it wasn’t their fault, that they did nothing wrong, and that I’m sorry we let them down.”