A mother has revealed the heart-breaking reason she and her husband returned their adopted babies into foster care, after falling pregnant.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, UK school librarian Ali Sanders revealed she and her husband Michael threw all their efforts into the adoption process back in 2014, after doctors said they were infertile.
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After receiving the news they were receiving eight-month-old twin boys, the couple spent six weeks getting to know their babies; visiting them at the foster home where they had been placed, decorating their nursery and preparing for the big 'take-home day'.
But Sanders said throughout the process something didn't feel right. She describes how on the day they brought home their "chunky and squidgy" new sons, her maternal instincts didn't kick in as she watched her husband fussing over the car seats, "already head over heels in love".
"I remember Michael's dad meeting them,' says Sanders. "He said: 'Here's Grandad!' He was so happy. Everyone was. My parents were thrilled, too."
Sanders told the Daily Mail she just wasn't "getting it," instead feeling "numb and flat".
"It felt like I was playing that it wasn't real,' she says. "What made it worse was that Michael bonded with the babies immediately. He already felt like Daddy".
After persuasion from her husband, Ali says she decided to go to the doctor, where she received a bombshell.
She was pregnant, after being told explicitly she would never be able to have children.
Shocked, Ali and Michael called their social workers, and by the end of the day, the adoption process was off. The babies went back to their foster parents that very evening.
Sanders says she believes she was unable to bond with the boys due to already being pregnant.
"I think it was a physical thing. The way I couldn't connect with the twins was completely out of character.
"I don't think the guilt will ever go. I let down these babies who had already been let down."
The Daily Mail reports couple were denied any further contact with the twins, who have reportedly since been adopted by another couple.
Four years on, the Sanders' now have three-year-old Jacob, and are expecting another baby - a girl in October.
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