Nancy Womac believed for the past 42 years that she would eventually meet the little girl taken from her at birth while she was in a Tennessee hospital.
Womac was not allowed to hold her baby when she was born in June 1979, Today reported Monday.
However, the big moment came in August when she and Melanie Spencer embraced, thanks to a reunion spurred by a 2018 DNA test on the Ancestry website.
“I loved her from the first time I knew I was pregnant,” Womac recalled. “Never stopped loving her.”
She was 16 and lived in an orphanage in Georgia when she found out she was pregnant.
The young woman was later sent to Bethesda Home for Girls in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, one of several children’s homes founded by a preacher named Lester Roloff, who was reportedly killed in a plane crash in 1982.
It was described as a place for troubled young people to learn discipline through the Bible; however, according to court documents that eventually resulted in the homes being shut down. Girls who stayed there said they were abused.
Following six months of being at the home, Womac was taken to Tennessee to deliver her child.
“I remember going into labor, and they just give me a shot and put me out,” she recalled, noting she did not remember having the baby.
Meanwhile, Spencer grew up overseas as the adopted child of missionaries and later moved to the U.S. to work in counseling.
After she had two children, it heightened her desire to learn about her biological mom.
“I really started thinking about what will I tell them about where they’re from,” Spencer explained. “I decided to do Ancestry. The most interesting part was that it came up with a DNA match. It had been almost 40 years, and I thought, ‘Why not?'”
The test results eventually led her to contact Womac’s sister, who did not see the message until a year later when she logged into her Ancestry profile.
The mom and daughter finally connected via social media, and Spencer traveled from Maryland to Womac’s residence in Georgia for their first meeting.
“Forty-two years of questions,” Spencer commented. “It feels like coming home.”