I just want to say to Samantha and all the other people going through similar things with their babies, please don't give up.
6 years ago my mum took my daughter. She was 15 at the time. We were having normal mother/teenage disagreements, my mother convinced her to go and stay with her for a few days. She never came back home. My mother systematically and completely poisoned my daughter against me and within a matter of a few weeks, all contact with my daughter ceased. I did everything I could think of. Begged, pleaded, contacted legal help, medical help. Nobody would help me, as far as they were concerned my daughter was safe and with a family member. Nobody would look into the motives my mother had for behaving this way and nobody would listen to me about the experience I had as a teenager with my mother (I spent most of my teenage years in care) my voice was completely ignored. I stopped functioning for the best part of a year, couldn't do the most basic of things. I grieved for a child that was very much still alive. It's something you don't ever get over, you just have to learn to keep breathing. It destroyed me. I couldn't believe how irrelevant I was, how powerless and disregarded I was as her mother, by all the authorities that are supposed to help.
And then this January, out of the blue, I woke up to a message on facebook from my daughter. Now 21. We are rebuilding. She lives in her own flat now and has cut contact with my mother. We talk everyday and see each other often, all the fears I had about how she would be treated the same way by my mother as I was as a child and teenager, have come true. She was controlled by guilt and manipulation which made it impossible for her to change her mind about coming home, until she found her own strength and her own space. But I hope she can recover easier and faster than I ever managed to.
It's hard, I don't think that the level of pain and fear of having your child taken from you ever leaves you. My reason for writing this is that I never thought my daughter would be part of my life again. But 6 years later, things have changed so dramatically for the better, and in a way I never believed could happen. Please don't give up.
Sorry this turned out so long, it became a little bit of therapy for me to type it all out
Pregnancy has given me many unwanted things, I don’t need more hair
