It’s the heartbreaking story that moved everyone who read it this week. Three newborn babies abandoned in east London parks over the past seven years have been revealed to be siblings.
The youngest, Elsa, was just an hour old when a dog walker found her on a freezing night in January this year, wrapped in a towel and with the umbilical cord still attached.
It was a particularly painful read for Toyin Odumala. She, too, was abandoned when she was just hours old: abandoned on a staircase in southeast London, with the umbilical cord still attached, wrapped in a denim jacket and placed in a plastic bag by her mother.
Toyin Odumala was abandoned as a newborn in 2001; She was finally adopted, when she was four months old, by a Nigerian couple.
“I saw the news on social media,” says Toyin, now 22, who was placed in foster care while police asked her mother to come forward, before being adopted at four months. “Without knowing the circumstances, it’s hard to know what to think of the parents, or how desperate they were, but I’m surprised it’s happened three times.”
Toyin was moved to tears when she read about Baby Elsa, named after the Frozen character because of the frigid conditions she was in. “I started crying,” she admits. ‘Two dog walkers found me. She felt very familiar. I didn’t want the baby to grow up with the emotional trauma I had. I blamed myself, wondering what I had done wrong to make them leave me alone and who she really was.
The story of the three abandoned brothers has given Toyin a new purpose for the campaign he has launched.
Toyin’s mother had given birth to her at home and then left me on the stairs of a block of flats where two dog walkers found her in a carrier bag.
Despite extensive police investigations and appeals through national news, Toyin’s biological mother did not identify herself, but wrote a letter to the adoption agency with her information.
Looking for possible solutions to the fact that up to 16 babies are abandoned in Britain each year, she came across the American concept of Safe Haven Baby Boxes. Safe, temperature-controlled shelters where mothers can leave babies anonymously, without threat of prosecution, close automatically when a baby is left inside, and contain a sensor that alerts authorities.
There is an affiliated 24-hour helpline for new mothers, and since the first box was installed in 2016, more than 140 babies have been safely delivered and recovered across the US.
Toyin was seven years old when her mother told her she was adopted: “I felt shocked and sad. It was the beginning of my identity crisis,” she says.
Similar “baby hatch” systems have also been implemented in Chinese cities and European countries such as Germany, Austria, Belgium and Italy, alongside hospitals and other public buildings.
In a bold move that broke the secrecy about her own origins, earlier this year Toyin posted videos on TikTok revealing she was also a “foundling” before announcing her petition to bring baby boxes to the UK.
The posts went viral online, attracting 650,000 views so far, and their petition has been signed by almost 42,000 people. The outpouring of support has provided him with an unexpected source of comfort.
“At first I felt exposed and embarrassed,” says Toyin, whose middle name is Osie, after the registrar on duty at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, London, where she was taken after being abandoned in July 2001.
‘But I’m happy people know it now. Sharing my story has helped me and I hope it benefits others. For a long time I felt ashamed of being “the abandoned child as a baby,” says Toyin. But I’m trying to get something positive out of it. “Saving babies feels like my calling.” Toyin was 11 years old when she discovered that she was a foundling and the ramifications have been far-reaching.
Once a diligent student, she fell into a depression: ‘I stopped doing my homework. I got distracted at school. I was not eating. I didn’t even want to wash. I had nightmares and cried to the point that I couldn’t cry anymore.’
When she confided in her friends at school, they expressed concern for her well-being, but because she had a supportive adoptive family, they didn’t understand “why she was so focused on the past.”
His adoptive parents (his father, an IT consultant, 60, and his mother, 57, a nurse) tried their best to be supportive, but Toyin didn’t feel like they really understood him.
‘When I was a child, my parents were loving and protective. We went on a lot of vacations and weekend outings,” recalls Toyin, a privately educated marketing executive who still lives at home.
She was seven years old when her mother told her she was adopted. “I felt shocked and sad. It was the beginning of my identity crisis.’
It has been discovered that baby Elsa, who was abandoned in January this year, has two siblings: baby Harry (pictured), who was found in September 2017…
…and Baby Roman (pictured), who, like his siblings, was found in Newham, east London; They left him in a park in January 2019.
At the time, Toyin was not told why her biological parents had abandoned her, or who they were, nor did she ask. “I had a lot of questions, but I felt like I should be grateful for the love my parents gave me, so I buried them at first.”
As the years passed, he could no longer keep his curiosity to himself and finally asked his adoptive mother, “Who is my mother?” Where is she? Will I find her one day?
Toyin’s mother, a private woman who had not publicized the fact that her son was adopted, told him that she did not have the information. Toyin recalls: “He seemed to find it uncomfortable to talk and became irritated. I didn’t want to upset her, but I felt like she knew more than she was letting on. We started arguing.’
When Toyin was 11, her mother visited the south London adoption agency that had given her daughter to her and discovered that Toyin’s birth mother had come forward following a police appeal, saying she was willing to be contacted.
They were not allowed to see each other face to face until Toyin turned 18, and only then after the adoption agency provided her with therapy to ensure she was emotionally ready. Instead, Ella Toyin wrote a letter, detailing her favorite subjects in school and saying that she was an only child.
‘I also asked if there was anything I should know about my medical experience. And then I asked him why he abandoned me. The answer came weeks later. “My biological mother wrote that she could not keep me because she did not have the documents to remain in Britain and she thought she would have to return to the Ivory Coast, where she was from.”
She had broken up with Toyin’s biological father when she was pregnant and was now living in south-east London with a new partner and three younger children, and was pregnant with a fourth.
There was no tangible feeling of remorse. ‘The letter was brief and vague. I felt offended. He could have said something more to show that he cared. He attached a photograph of her, but Toyin says: ‘All her features were different. There was no resemblance. I wondered if she was really my mother.
The news that he had half-siblings caused jealousy. “They lived with their mother and I was outside.” The fact that her biological mother was close to her “made me feel like she wanted to get rid of me and move on with her life.” I felt like she didn’t love me and I made a selfish decision. I didn’t contact her again.
Toyin’s adoptive mother presented a letter that social workers had written to her in 2002, which filled in some devastating gaps about what had happened the day she was found.
“You were found in the stairwell of a block of flats… with only a few hours to live,” the letter said. “You were dressed in a yellow and white baby robe and a jean jacket inside a carrying bag to make sure you didn’t get wet…Despite extensive police investigations and appeals through national news, your family of origin “he didn’t identify himself.”
In a state of shock, Toyin remembers: “I didn’t sleep at all that night. I imagined that I was abandoned because my biological mother was a teenager or sick, but I never imagined that I had been left alone on a staircase. Anything would have been better.’ Toyin’s biological mother was 26 years old when she gave birth and the identity of her father was unknown. ‘My mother knew she was abandoned when she adopted me, but she had been told not to tell me in case she was harmful. She had been trying to protect me, although I now know that it can be more damaging for adopted children not to know her identity at a young age.
Toyin oscillated between longing to know her biological mother and anger at her actions.
“I imagined holding her and thinking how it would feel to look into her eyes and if we shared the same gestures: would she bite her nails or blink when she was tired like I do? But then she would remember what she did and change her mind.
Getting pregnant at 18 generated more mixed emotions. But developing postpartum depression after giving birth to her son in May 2020 helped her relate to how vulnerable her birth mother could have been.
On the other hand, raising her son, who is now three years old, has been cathartic. ‘He’s the only person I’m genetically linked to. He looks exactly the same as I did at his age and we have the same way of widening our eyes when we stop talking. There’s a different connection.’
However, she now sees herself as a product of her upbringing, rather than her genes. There was no tangible turning point, she says, although writing about her emotions helped, as did the love of her parents. “It’s not your blood that makes you who you are, but how you grow.”
Toyin isn’t sure she wants to meet her biological mother. ‘I imagine I’ll get emotional and I don’t want her to see me break down. Sometimes I want to see it and then I think I’m not ready. But I don’t think she’ll ever feel ready for me.
