Nancy Womac gave birth to a beautiful, healthy daughter and couldn’t wait to raise her. Unfortunately, the baby was stolen from her even before she could hold her after giving birth at a Tennessee hospital. This was 42 years ago and while most people would’ve given up the hope of finding their child, Womac did not. She knew deep in her heart that she would definitely meet her daughter one day.
Womac would even bake a birthday cake every year on her daughter’s birthday and wonder how she was doing in life. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, she should be taking her first step now,’ or, ‘She should have lost her first tooth,’ or, ‘Her first day of school should have started,'” shared the mother.
“And every year on her birthday, I know it didn’t make any sense, but I always baked her a cake. She would be 12 today. She would be 13 today. She would be 14 today,” Womac noted. What she didn’t know was that in 2021, she would finally be reunited with her long-lost child who goes by Melanie Spencer now.
The tearful meeting was made possible by a 2018 DNA test on Ancestry. “Forty-two years of questions,” said Spencer in an interview with NBC News senior national correspondent Kate Snow. “It feels like coming home.” As for her mom, who has desperately waited four decades for this day to arrive admitted, “And she’s just what I thought she would be. She’s beautiful. She’s smart.”
Womac was living in a Dalton, Georgia orphanage and was just 16 when she became pregnant. “I loved her from the first time I knew I was pregnant,” said Womac according to TODAY. “Never stopped loving her.” However, when the director of the orphanage found out about it, she was sent to the Bethesda Home for Girls in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. After six months, she was flown to East Ridge, Tennesse, where she finally delivered her baby.
“I remember going into labor, and they just give me a shot and put me out,” she shared. “I don’t remember having her. I don’t remember them wheeling me into the delivery room. I don’t remember nothing. She was then gone by the time I woke up.” Womac continued, “She was my firstborn. It’s something that you never really get over.”
As for Spencer, she grew up in South Africa and Indonesia after being adopted as a daughter of missionaries. They told her, “it was important for my biological mother that I go into a good Christian home.” Just like Womac, Spencer too was curious about her biological mother. “I always had a lot of questions about her. I wanted to find her, I wanted to know more about her. I think there was fear that it could be very hurtful if I dug more and found out that she didn’t want me,” she expressed.
Spencer moved to the U.S. for college and had two kids of her own after earning a master’s degree. Having a family of her own made her wonder about her biological parents even more. “I really started thinking about what will I tell them about where they’re from. 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?'” she shared.
She first found Womac’s sister, Cheryl Blackwell, who then led her to her Facebook account. Spencer and Womac soon began texting each other and even spent a few days together in Georgia. She also met Womac’s other children, shared meals, and spent time looking at old pictures. Although the mother has missed out on so many things in her daughter’s life, she is happy she at least got to share these beautiful moments now.