When she was 18, Francine Kirsch fell pregnant to her boyfriend, Jeff Zipman.

Her family, who were well-known members of a close-knit Jewish community in Winnipeg, Canada, where they had moved from the UK when their daughter was six, were horrified.

With Ms Kirsch unable to care for or support a baby, it was decided she should give the child up for adoption, and she was sent to stay with an aunt in Leeds.

Thousands of miles away from home, she gave birth to a baby girl on 18 November, 1976. Seconds after Ms Kirsch saw her baby, the infant was taken away by social services and given up for adoption through Norwood.

However, 42 years later, she and Mr Zipman, neither of whom ever went on to have their own children, are desperate to find out what happened to the baby they were forced to give up.

Fighting back the tears, an emotional Ms Kirsch said: “I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was five months’ gone. I was terrified. I didn’t want a baby. I just wasn’t ready,” she said.

The fact she was not married had “brought shame to the family,” which she describes as traditionally Jewish.

Her father, Arnold Kirsch, who was born in 1927 in Holborn, London, had moved the family from Leeds to Canada in the hope of finding better opportunities.

“We weren’t hugely religious but we were well known in the Jewish community of Winnipeg and it was a huge embarrassment that I had become pregnant. My father was furious.”

Ms Kirsch had pleaded with her doctor to perform an abortion but she refused.

“I originally went because I had heartburn, I had no reason to suspect I was pregnant. I was terrified. I was desperate.”

Part of her fear she says came from the shock that she “hadn’t actually had sex,” admitting she knows how unlikely it sounds.

“I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me,” she said. “Jeff and I were sexually active but we had not had penetrative sex. I told the doctor who examined me that I was a virgin.”

Mr Zipman, who was as shocked as she was, tried to do “the right thing. He offered to marry me. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to marry him. I wasn’t ready and he couldn’t support me.”

She arrived in Leeds, five months’ pregnant, to stay with her aunt, Betty Gibbs, who helped to put her in touch with Norwood’s adoption services.

“I wanted to find a Jewish family for my baby,” Ms Kirsch said. “It was important to me and in the end Norwood told me they had found a Jewish family who had adopted a baby boy before and were excited about getting a little girl.”

Her voice broke as she explained how scared she was to be five months’ pregnant in a country “all on my own. It was traumatic.”

Her mother, Helen, arrived in Leeds on the day her daughter was due to give birth. She went into labour a week later.

“I was put in an ambulance at 4am, scared to death. I remember being taken to St James’s Hospital.

“They put me in a room with other women, it was so dark. I was screaming in pain, I didn’t know how to control it. The nurses were cold and told me to ‘shut up.’

“I was terrified. It was surreal. I gave birth to her, they let me look at her and then they took her away,” the 60-year-old explains as she fights back her tears.

That was the only time Ms Kirsch saw her daughter. All that remains of her experience are her memories and a nameless birth certificate, stamped “adoption”.

The certificate records only the surname of the child and the date of birth, “18 November, 1976” and the place of the birth as “St James’s Hospital, Leeds.”

“Maybe if I had been given a moment to bond with her, my maternal instinct would have kicked in and I would have said that there is no way I am giving this up,” she said, in obvious pain. Ms Kirsch, who separated from Mr Zipman soon after the birth, believes their daughter was adopted by a couple from London, a social worker and a teacher.

“I have always just wanted to know that she is happy. There can’t be many people who adopted a boy and then a girl in 1976. It sounds like it should be easy to find her but I know it is hard.”

Although Ms Kirsch and Mr Zipman are not together, they remain friends and often talk about where their daughter, who today would be 42, ended up.

Mr Zipman began his own search for her 20 years ago but he has never had any luck tracking her down.

“She could be anywhere in the world, I know that. And time is running out,” Ms Kirsch says.

“It would be a dream come true for me if I could know my daughter.”

She has many hopes for what her daughter’s life has been like, but none are more important than for her “good health and that she is happy,” she says.

“But I guess my biggest hope,” she pauses, “is that she is looking for me too.”