Ana Carla longed to meet her biological mum – but it took a Facebook post to reveal the “lie” that had kept the family apart.
A woman has been reunited with her long lost mum after she was sold as a baby by her grandmother to avoid bringing “shame” to the family.
Ana Paula Tolosa Safigueroa, 48, was born when her mum was just 13 – and the family thought they be met with “social condemnation” if they kept her.
It wasn’t until Ana Paula was 24 that she discovered she had been bought by her adoptive parents.
Now, she and her 62-year-old biological mother, Devora Safigueroa, have been reunited in their home country of Argentina after almost five decades apart.
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Devora revealed that her parents took her child from her against her will just moments after she was born.
She was subsequently sold to a family she long suspected was not her biological one, given their different physical features.
“When I was born, the midwife told my mother that I was a boy and that they had given me to some people in Magdalena. It was all a lie, so they could never find me,” she told local TV channel TN.
“During my childhood, I was 20 blocks from my real parents’ house.”
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Then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ana Paula was contacted by a biological cousin on Facebook, who then notified Devora’s daughters – Ana Paula’s sisters – who then told Devora herself.
The cousin found Ana Paula after she shared a post on the social network writing about her long lost mum accompanied by a photo of herself, which the cousin saw and noticed she resembled Devora’s daughters.
A DNA test performed in August 2020 matched both mum and daughter with 99.9 per cent certainty.
Ana Paula was living in the city of La Plata and Devora in the city of Bragado at the time, over three hours away by car.
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Due to coronavirus restrictions, they could not meet in person, so they spent a month talking via video call until they were finally able to meet and hug.
In addition to her mum, Ana Paula was also reunited with her dad, who cried during the trio’s first video call.
Of their first meeting in person, Devora said: “It’s a dream I didn’t want to wake up from.”
This story first appeared on The Sun and has been republished with permission