It was the blow Ellie Simmonds never expected when she set out to look for her birth mother.
The Paralympian and Strictly Come Dancing star always knew she was adopted, but last year discovered her real mum gave her up when she was just ten days old.
Ellie, 28, was then put in foster care before going to live with her adoptive parents John and Avril Simmonds at three months old.
The swimmer, who won five Paralympic golds during her career in Beijing, London and Rio, has credited their love and nurturing - as well as the swimming pool in her childhood home - with her extraordinary sporting success.
Ellie says they also supported her when she decided to look for her real mother after “questions started to bubble up”, and with the help of a specialist social worker got hold of the case files from her birth and adoption.
She discovered that her mother was at first assured that everything was normal with her newborn daughter, but she had insisted there was something was wrong and two days later Ellie - born Eleanor - was diagnosed achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism.
Among the documents was an information sheet that had been given to her mother, in which she was warned that her daughter would have a “large skull and depressed nasal bridge” and that children with her condition “tend to be muscular and acrobatic, which is perhaps the reason for them traditionally being involved in the circus and other forms of theatre”.
The form continued: “Children have to deal with being stared at and laughed at by other children. Indeed, there are those with normal height who equate short stature with evil and stupidity.”
Speaking in a new ITV documentary, shocked Ellie says: “Can you imagine reading that and thinking, ‘that’s my child’? In a way, I understand, when you don’t know anything about the disability and you get this. You’re going to be scared, aren’t you?”
But when Ellie asks if there is any information that suggests her mum might want to get back in contact with her, the social warns her she has another note she wants to show her “because I wouldn’t want you to read this when you’re by yourself.”
The report detailing a conversation with her mother before she gave her up for adoption reads: “Talked a lot about birth mother’s feelings. She feels very guilty regarding Eleanor’s disability and wishes that she’d had an abortion, or that Eleanor had died.”
“Oh, wow,” Ellie reacts. “So she wanted me dead."
The blow nearly caused Ellie to call off the search. But after getting in touch with the family of the woman who fostered her for three months, and finding out she had died only a year earlier, she decides she still wants to speak to her real mother “because it’s too late”.
Her social worker eventually found contact details for her birth mother and the pair started exchanging letters.
In her first letter to her, her mother wrote: “Your father and I separated before I realised I was expecting you.
“Unfortunately it was a very sad ad traumatic in my life and I struggled with my mental health. I have suffered with guilt and self-hatred for not being strong enough to cope.”
She added: “I cannot express the happiness I feel to know your parents and siblings have provided you with such a loving environment, that that you’re so happy. You’ve achieved so much.”
Finally, mother and daughter met in a local hotel, when they spent five hours together - and immediately felt a special connection.
Ellie, who has decided to protect her birth mother’s identity, says: “It was amazing. I didn’t even realise the time was passing by.
“We literally spoke about everything, we we’re howling with laughter, we’ve got the same sense of humour, we were laughing so much.
“I kept looking at her and thinking, ‘Wow that’s my mum’. I felt like her face was just like mine.
What touched my heart was that she said she thinks about me every day, that really got me, and that she still sees me as her daughter.”
Ellie adds: “I think it’s helped with the finding out who I am, looking at someone who birthed me, the nature that I’m from, it makes you a bit more whole.
“Although I have no idea how this will all play out I’m glad I’ve gone through this process. Questions I’ve carried for years have been answered. I’m proud of my life and I love my family, and maybe perhaps that family just a got a bit bigger.”
READ NEXT
