PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Bucks County teacher is searching for her birth parents who gave her up 40 years ago in a Delaware County hospital.
“I know very little. I was told that my mother’s first name was Josephine and my father’s first name was Sherman,” said Ashley, who doesn’t want to use her last name.
Ashley was born Jacqueline Nicole at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Upper Darby in March of 1986.
“The only reason I know I was born at that hospital — my mother looked in the file when the woman went to the bathroom. She wasn’t supposed to do that,” Ashley said.
It was a closed adoption through Catholic Services, which denies access to birth records.
“She has photos of me, up until a year old. My mother sent them to her up to a year through the agency.”
Ashley is a mom herself and realizes how difficult it must have been for her birth mother.
“That takes a lot of strength to do something like that,” she said.
But to signify that the baby was adored, her birth mother left a small musical figurine inside her bassinet: a baby with an angel floating above.
“I am getting a little bit older, and I would like to have some type of health history. I am a mom, my daughter is only 16, but I would like her to have some type of health history.”
She posted her story on Facebook, hoping someone would reach out.
“I wasn’t expecting such an outreach of people, I mean, just from a couple of posts I made on different sites, hundreds of people have contacted me or wrote on the post and it’s kind of crazy, I really wasn’t expecting that much of an outreach from it,” she said.
Ashley said she realizes this may be a lot for her birth parents to handle, but she’s hoping to know them in some way.
“I would like to know if I look like somebody. I would also like to know a little bit about her, if she would be willing to tell me anything, or maybe not, that’s fine too.
She set up an email account to glean any information.