A US woman who was kidnapped as a infant 23 years ago says finding her real mother "felt like a dream."

"I'm so happy. At the same time, it's a funny feeling because everything's brand new. It's like being born again," said the woman, who was named Carlina White by her parents but was raised in Connecticut under the name Nejdra Nance.

The 19-day-old baby Carlina was kidnapped in 1987 after her worried parents took her to Harlem Hospital with a fever.

A woman who was dressed as a nurse abducted the baby; no suspect was ever arrested.

Carlina's distraught parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, feared they would never see their daughter again.

Carlina, or Nejdra, was raised by an abusive drug addict, she told the New York Post. She said she had long suspected that she wasn't the woman's real daughter.

When she got pregnant herself at 16, she asked her mother for a birth certificate so she could get prenatal care. Her mother could not provide one.

She gave birth to a daughter who is now six, and when she recently moved on her own to Atlanta, Georgia, she decided to seek out her birth parents.

The Centre for Missing and Exploited Children helped her connect the dots. Then the centre contacted Joy White

"We may have found your daughter," Joy White said the caller told her.

DNA tests confirmed that Nejdra was in fact Carlina.

Mother and daughter were reunited on Saturday; they were in a Manhattan hotel today where the Post interviewed them.

"I'm sitting here and I'm in a daze, thinking, 'Is this for real?' I missed the last 23 years of her life. I have to take it all in, for now just take it day by day," Joy White told the newspaper.

Carlina White said: "I just never gave up on finding my real mother. I just kept on pushing."