We adopted both our children as 6 week old babies in the 1970s. They had been named by their birth mothers and appear on FreeBMD with those names, although we changed them to names of our choosing after the legal adoption process had gone through. I think the nursing home or maybe the adoption society dealt with the registering of the birth and the courts dealt with the renaming, issuing "short" birth certificates and adoption certificates. Until the court process was complete the birth mother was still the legal mother and her agreement would have been required for anything to do with the baby. After the baby was placed with a family by the adoption society there was a period before the court hearing when the baby became a ward of court. Finally with the legal side of things completed the baby became a full member of his or her new family. It took a long time, and in that period between the birth and the legal adoption the birth mother could change her mind, making those few months rather nerve-wracking, as there were home visits by social workers from both the adoption society and the local council.
My children still appear on FreeBMD with their birth names, as does my brother, who was adopted in 1936, again through an adoption society. He was able, after counselling, to obtain his original birth certificate, and made contact with some of his birth family members, though this was just to answer questions he had about his origins, and he only did this late in life after the deaths of both our parents, having had a happy life in our family.
