From A Reader's Guide to William Gaddis's The Recognitions:

"The Day They Gave Babies Away" is a story by Dale Eunson that appeared in the Christmas 1946 number of Cosmopolitan, their most successful Christmas story ever. It was published as a book the following year. Perhaps more to the point, there was a soldiers' ditty circulating in the 1940s that went "Today is the day they give babies away / with a half a pound of tea. / If you know any ladies who want any babies / Just send them round to me."

The William A. Graham Collection of Television Scripts at Yale University has a script called, "Today is the Day We Give Babies Away" -- an episode of a TV series called "The Eleventh Hour." It was written by Hilda Rolfe, and appeared in 1963.

"This Is the Day We Give Babies Away" by Priscilla T. Nagle, is an article in the book "The Adoption Reader: Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers, and Adopted Daughters Tell Their Stories," edited by Susan Wadia-Ells, 1995.

The line "Today is the day we give babies away, with half a pound of tea..." is quoted in this Autobiography of Virginia Bradford (1900-1996) -- silent movie star. It comes from a passage where the actress is reminiscing about several songs she knew as a child before 1913.