A tiny handmade cardigan was knitted with love by a mother-to-be in 1974.
But Kim McIlveen's son Michael would never feel its warmth.
She went into labour before she could finish the project and her son was forcibly adopted out.
It's just one of the heart-breaking stories in the Without Consent exhibition at the National Archives of Australia, launched two years after Julia Gillard's national apology to those affected by forced adoptions.
From the 1950s to the 1970s an estimated 150,000 unwed Australian mothers had their babies forcibly adopted under a practice sanctioned by governments, churches, hospitals, charities and bureaucrats.
Some women were tricked into signing adoption papers, drugged and physically shackled to hospital beds.
The former prime minister reflected on the privilege and solemn duty she felt delivering the apology after briefly alluding to the unsuccessful leadership spill motion that later overshadowed the event.
It was about telling an uncomfortable and emotional truth "so errors of this kind are never made again".
"On that day two years ago we took a step to being a better country," Ms Gillard said at the exhibition launch in Canberra on Monday.
But that step alone should not be relegated to the history books - it had to live and breathe in the community.
Queenslander Margaret Oakhill Hamilton, whose son Paul was taken away from her at birth in 1966, also contributed items to the exhibit.
She eventually tracked down her lost son and was in contact with him for 24 years before he died last year.
This year the anniversary of his death falls on Mother's Day.
"The gift that was taken from me was given to someone else, but it wasn't theirs to take away," Ms Oakhill Hamilton told AAP.
"Adoption is a life sentence."
Former Family Court Judge Nahum Mushin, who is on the national forced adoption advisory committee, called on the federal government to renew money for support services due to expire in 2017.
He said Australia needed uniform adoption laws and the country should consider abandoning the practice altogether.
Prof Mushin also denounced bilateral agreements on intercountry adoption with countries not signatories to the Hague convention, questioning whether it was in the best interests of children.
* Without Consent exhibition is on at the National Archives in Canberra until July 19.
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