Ellie Simmonds has opened up further about meeting her birth mother for the first time after recently revealing that she was adopted as a baby.
Last year, the gold medal-winning swimmer and former Strictly Come Dancing star embarked on a search for her blood family after finding out she had been put up for adoption when she was just 10 days old.
The 28-year-old was left devastated when she found out her birth mother had reportedly wished that she had died at birth after medics told her she would be ridiculed and seen as “evil” and “stupid” after being born with achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism.
This did not put her off wanting to meet her biological mum however and is the subject of a new ITV documentary, Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family, which airs on July 6 at 9pm.
Appearing on ITV’s This Morning on Wednesday, Simmonds told hosts Holly Willoughby and Craig Doyle how she had initially only wanted a 15-minute meeting, but that it soon turned into a five-hour affair as mother and daughter found that they had so much to talk about and catch up on.
“I was so nervous about meeting her - I was so stressed. But when I did meet her, I could immediately see the similarities between us both. We embraced the minute we met and ended up chatting for five hours straight,” she explained.
“We have so many similar personality traits and we have the same eyes and use the same facial expressions,” Simonds added.
Simmonds, who was eventually raised by a loving family in the West Midlands, also revealed that her birth mother had worked out that she was her long lost daughter after watching the Paralympics where she went on to win gold.
The clues that gave it away were that Simmonds had kept the same name she was given at birth, plus, her specific condition, however her mum chose not to reach out to her daughter out of respect.
After discovering that her birth mum had followed her sporting journey, Simmonds said that she was so thankful that her mum gave her the time and respect to go looking for her first.
