Brenda Van Sickle was only 15 when she became pregnant and delivered a baby boy in 1975.
A Texas mother who placed her infant son for adoption in 1975 has been joyfully reunited with him. "Mom, it's me," said 45-year-old Wes Fenner as he met his mother, Brenda Van Sickle, for the first time.
"I’m not a huge crier,” he recently told NBC News. “But it was definitely one of those moments. It was kind of like looking at myself, a slightly older version of myself, in the mirror."
"I wiped away his tears and he wiped away mine,” Van Sickle said.
She was only 15 when she became pregnant and gave birth at 16. "I did see him for about 15 minutes before the nurse took him away,” she said. "It was very hard. If I could have taken care of him, I would have. But it just wasn't right to do that to him."
She later got married, worked in broadcast journalism and is now a public information office for the Arlington Police Department in Texas.
"It was all I could do to sign those papers and walk out the door and leave him,” she said. “It was really hard."
A few months ago, she received a phone call at work. The man on the other end was Fenner.
Through DNA and an "adoption angel," Fenner said he was able to locate his birth mother.
"It was an awkward first conversation,” he said. "She was not expecting a phone call at work saying, 'Hi, did you put a child up for adoption in 1975?' That was an odd phone call."
They later met in person at a hotel, and hugged each other for 20 minutes, they said.
"I'm looking forward to the next stage,” Van Sickle said. “Meeting him wasn't the end of the journey. It's an ongoing journey."
RELATED STORIES
