A bad back was the spark for Jayne to think about her family history.

When her back problems began she thought it might be arthritis and started thinking how important it might be medically to know her full family history.

But not knowing her mum, that was impossible.

This may all seem very unromantic and not like the emotionally-charged dramas about adopted people searching for their parents that we see on the television or at the cinema.

But, as Jayne says, the realities of adoption are often far less complicated.

"I know a lot of people who spend their whole life waiting and when they do meet their real mother for the first time there are a lot of emotions, but it wasn't like that for us, " she said.

"I think I understand it from Sandi's point of view because for seven or eight weeks of her life I was her daughter.

"But for the whole of my life I have been Gilbert and Dorothy Parkhouse's daughter." After deciding to find her birth mother she posted her details on the internet and was eventually contacted by a researcher who gave her a great deal of personal information about Sandi.

"I decided to write a letter using a name I used to write under as an IT journalist and say that I was doing some research in to a family tree.

"The day she got the message she phoned me on my mobile.

The two kept in touch by phone and then met at a neutral venue, but there was no running in to each other's arms, said Jayne.

"I was a bit nervous but we just hit it off straight away.

"But I never thought of her as my mum because I already had a mum.

"I don't feel adopted, I just always knew that there was someone out there who had given birth to me."

She recalls her first day at school when everyone was asked to say who they were and where they came from.

"I stood there proud as punch and announced to the world 'I was a chosen baby because I was adapted' - boy, did the teacher laugh. I felt quite small."

She tried to put her birth mother to the back of her mind but when she was in her 30s she says her dad, former Glamorgan and England cricketer Gilbert Parkhouse, told her that her mother's name was Sandra and that she had been called Katerina.

"The shock was immense, I remember it well.

"Rushing home I stood in front of the mirror and told myself I couldn't be Katerina, I was Jayne." Now, still Jayne, she also knows Sandi and likes to think of her as a friend.

She is glad she answered the call when her mobile rang and flashed up her mother's maiden name.

"That was something I will never forget, joy and fear all rolled in to one.

"I did, after what seemed like forever, answer it and, of course, there's lots more history now."

(Taken from the South Wales Evening Post)