I was adopted last minute at Christmas.

If I was asked to play that game where you have to choose which three things you would grab on your way out of a burning house, this Polaroid photograph of me and Mum  in front of the Christmas tree would be top of my list. The tree is 1970s-scraggly and the picture doesn’t catch me at my cutest (what’s that they say about all babies looking like Churchill?).

However, Mum’s beautiful smile fills me with enough cheer to last all year. As does the fact that this isn’t just a photograph of my first Christmas. Though I was almost three months old at the time it was taken, this is the first photograph of me as a Manby. My mum and dad, Ann and Don, did not expect to be spending that Christmas as parents…

Continue reading at:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/i-was-adopted-last-minute-at-christmas/