AONLY A FEW MINUTES AFTER I enter the door, Louise Stenstrup shows me into the bright children's room in the apartment in the middle of Copenhagen. Or, it is probably more accurate to say the room that might become a children's room. It resonates a little when we talk, because right now there is only a light blue chest of drawers and on top of it a framed picture of a four-year-old boy with a nice smile and a gray sweatshirt.
" He is the one I am matched with," she says.
Louise knows from a thick case file that the boy in the picture loves watermelon and doesn't like scary movies, and that he is caring towards small children. And that he lives in an orphanage in South Africa, where he was born out of wedlock to a woman who gave him up at birth. Louise also knows that the biological mother later confirmed at the court in South Africa that she does not want him.
Since August 30, 2023, 43-year-old Louise Stenstrup has known that she and the four-year-old boy had been matched, as it is called, and that she was to be his mother. He was supposed to be her son. She has seen videos of him and feels a strong bond with him already. “ It was overwhelming to see him for the first time. I think you can compare it to when you see the scan image for the first time. And here you could really form an impression of who he is. Is he happy? Now I have tried both things, both seeing a scan image and then this. After all, it's a completely different idea when you don't just see a fetus, but a very small human being.”
Since August last year, she has been waiting for the South African authorities to issue a release certificate for her son, a so-called section 17c, so that she can travel to South Africa and meet him and, after a month there, take him to Denmark. Now she has no idea if that will ever happen. " It is extremely difficult that you suddenly do not know whether the ideas you have had will become real. It is the same fear that you have as a pregnant woman, that you will lose the child, which I think most people who have been through it can nod in recognition of.”