Mother meets daughter for first time, 50 years after hospital staff said her baby had died

Last Thursday, in Olivette, a suburb of St. Louis, Mo., a 76-year-old woman met her daughter for the first time.

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“There’s nothing greater. There’s nothing greater than this. Nothing,” Zella Jackson-Price, a gospel singer, said of meeting her daughter, Melanie Diane Gilmore, at her home.

Their reunion was a bittersweet one, filled with unanswered questions.

Just hours after Jackson-Price gave birth to a premature Gilmore on November 25, 1965, the new mom was told her baby girl had died.

But she hadn’t.

Gilmore was very much alive — and was adopted by another family.

Years passed. And while Jackson-Price believed that her daughter was dead, Gilmore longed to meet her biological mother.

Gilmore, who lost her hearing in childhood due to an illness, eventually told her children that she wanted to meet her birth mother. Using the name Gilmore’s adoptive parents could recall, Gilmore’s children were able to track down Jackson-Price on Facebook. They confirmed the women were a match with DNA samples.

Late last month, Gilmore’s children surprised her with a Skype chat with her long-lost mother.

“I love you,” an overwhelmed Gilmore signed to her mother.

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“(God) has given me everything the devil has taken from me,” Jackson-Price told KTVI. “I’m getting it back. I’m getting my baby back.”

Now that mother and daughter have reunited, they’re determined to make up for lost time, and have been introducing each other to new family members.

An investigation will soon be launched into what happened at the hospital almost five decades ago.