It happens every so often when someone in the office is pregnant. The mothers all start talking about their childbirth experiences. I smile and nod when they tell me I have all this to come. I am wiser than they know: I gave birth and gave my baby away.

A few years ago, I blurted it out. I thought I was speaking to a friend. “I had a baby back when I was 15 and gave him up for adoption.” Her face froze and I realised my error. The whispers started, and a few months later I was so pleased to move jobs.

At school, friends’ mothers told me quietly that I had done the right thing, while their daughters stared, unable to think of anything to say. My fresh start was university, where nobody knew. Now it’s so long ago that it barely feels like it happened to me. I would love to laugh about my stretch marks, to share my horror birth story – the one where my mother shouted at the midwife for calling me a slut and got asked to leave. But I can’t, because people expect a level of penitence that I don’t have.

It would be OK if I cried and blamed my parents. If I said I regretted the decision, but I don’t. I knew I wasn’t ready to be a mother the moment the doctor told me I was pregnant, and I certainly knew it when I was handed the angry, squalling ball of need. My parents said they would support me either way – they were never angry. My mother even knitted him booties. I put them on him as I handed him over to his mother. I knew she would be better for him than me – she was a real grownup while I was a child.

Maybe one day I will have children, but I wish that being someone’s birth mother would cease to be my secret shame. I don’t believe I did anything wrong.

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