A Belfast man who was reunited with his long-lost sister two years ago has now discovered he has a little brother too.
In 2020, David McBride and Helen Ward appeared on the ITV programme Long Lost Family in a bid to find out who their parents were after 50 years. David had been left in the front seat of a car on the outskirts of Belfast in January 1962, while Helen was found on the other side of the Irish border in a telephone box in Dundalk six years later.
The siblings were each found in a tartan bag when they were discovered, but their cases weren't connected until the ITV show aired two years ago and found they had a DNA match. Helen and David were found to be full siblings, with the same mother and father.
Read more: Belfast man reunited with sibling discovers parents' secret
Now, the siblings have revealed that after the show aired, a man got in contact with ITV after his daughter alerted him to the show, saying his own story sounded similar.
"We were driving back from Kerry and we'd just been to visit our mother's grave. Helen turned to me and said there was another child found in 1965, she said she had a feeling the child was connected to us. We thought nothing further of it," David explained to BBC Radio Ulster.
"The programme went out and it was broadcast down under, there was a lady from Waterford watching it. She immediately contacted her dad and said she thought he may be related to us. She first contacted ITV who asked if she and her father would do a DNA test, and they found John was our full brother."
John, too, was found in a tartan bag just three years after David was found, and three years before Helen.
"I could write a book about all we share," Helen said. "Between food habits, between looking at similarities in our children. We all speak together and meet up. We're just brothers and sisters, it's completely natural."
The team on Long Lost Family managed to trace their parents and discovered their father was a married man who was in a secret relationship with their mother spanning many years. Sadly their father, a shop manager from Dublin, died in 1993 at 82-years-old, while their mother passed away in November 2017 at the age of 90.
Their father was a married Protestant with 14 children, but their mother was 17 years younger and a Catholic during a time of huge sectarian conflict. Before he died in 1993 they were seen together in Dublin, showing they had an affair for around 40 years, and their mother never married or had any more children.
Looking back on two years since they were reunited, David and Helen reminisced on memories that have been missed and recounted seeing footage of their mother in years gone by.
Helen said: "I remember when my first daughter was born and looking at her and thinking about my wonderful parents, then thinking somewhere out there was my birth mother and she was missing out on the birth of her grandchildren. I thought so much of her throughout the years."
"Our mum lived until her 90s. We've seen DVD footage of her, some of it is very sad as she had a little girl doll she would never let go of," David added. "I said to Helen I had a feeling that is her memories of her, she was holding on and maybe later in life was trying to put together what had happened."
"She made her choices and they turned out alright for us. I've had a great life, I have a wonderful family, I now have a wonderful sister and brother. I've got two sisters and a brother in the north, and I've got step siblings as well. At the end of the day, she made a decision and that decision turned out right for us."
Helen described having her two brothers in her life now is a "huge celebration." She said: "I think the three of us feel the lives we've led and the families we were adopted into are amazing. We're very lucky as people.
"It is unfortunate we never got those conversations with our birth mother, but that's life and that's the way it goes. But it's now about moving forward."
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