'When my parents met me, I was in a baby farm'

Author Anstey Harris was adopted as a baby. Only now are the implications becoming clear

Becoming a grandparent for the first time blindsides many people. It’s not just the rush of love for this tiny person – your baby’s baby. It’s the realisation that the list of people you’d die for just got longer and, consequently, that your importance on the planet, your place in the Great Scheme of Things, has forever shifted.

When you’re adopted, it is a chance to watch your genes unfurl, to understand how characteristics are passed down through generations, and to see parts of yourself emerging from another human being. Of course, I had this opportunity with my own children, but when it’s only one generation deep, seeing the parts of your children that look like you feels like coincidence.

I’m part of the generation of adopted people born in the 1950s and 60s, when there was no support for unmarried mothers and they were often coerced into giving up their babies for adoption.

When my adoptive parents met me, I was in a baby farm – a room in a suburban bungalow, filled with babies in lie-back chairs, our bottles stuffed with rusk to keep us full up and quiet. This is my history as I have always known it and understood it. My parents told me – and my brother, their natural child, a year older than me – from before I had words, that I was adopted.