NBC News reports that a Missouri mother has been reunited with her daughter 50 years after a hospital mistakenly told her that her daughter had died during childbirth.
The daughter was adopted by another family after Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, MO stated that she had died at birth.
Zella Jackson-Price, 76, met her 49-year-old daughter, Melanie Diane Gilmore, for the first time after Melanie’s children started an online people search to find their mother’s real mother and were eventually able to connect and communicate with their grandmother, Jackson-Price, through Facebook.
Gilmore was shocked and happy to learn that her children had successfully found her real mother online using searches and social networks.
Jackson-Price told reporters that she is thankful for this second chance with her daughter and the discovery starts a new chapter in her life, but she is in shock over the mistake, which denied her 5 decades of life with her daughter.
Unfortunately, Melanie’s real father died several years ago.
Jackson-Price said that she plans to see a lawyer to find out if there is any legal recourse for the costly mistake that separated her from her daughter for so long.
The family said that they will start an investigation into what actually happened at the hospital that caused this horrible mistake.
Some have speculated that the “mistake” was actually a planned kidnapping of a newborn to put up for adoption. According to the reporter: “It is a mystery that may never be solved.”