Story highlights

Ann Pettway pleaded guilty to a federal kidnapping charge this year

Carlina Renae White was 19 days old when she was taken from a hospital in 1987

Court documents: Pettway admitted to taking the girl after suffering several miscarriages

White's suspicions grew after Pettway could not produce a birth certificate for her

New York CNN  — 

A woman who admitted to stealing an infant from a Manhattan hospital in 1987 and raising the girl as her own will be sentenced in July.

Ann Pettway pleaded guilty this year to a federal kidnapping charge after pleading not guilty in 2011.

U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel had initially set Monday as her sentencing date. But the date has been moved to July 6.

Pettway faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

“I raised her as my own, and I knew it was wrong,” Pettway said in February.

The abducted girl, Carlina Renae White, is now in her mid-20s. She was reunited with her biological mother last year.

White was 19 days old when her mother took her to the Harlem hospital with a fever more than two decades ago. The mother, Joy White, testified that she went home to rest and returned to the hospital to find her baby missing.

“Ann Pettway preyed on me,” Joy White said in February, adding that she remembered seeing Pettway at the hospital.

Pettway turned herself in to the FBI office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in January 2011, FBI spokesman William Reiner said.

According to court documents, Pettway admitted to taking the girl from a Harlem hospital after suffering several miscarriages. Court documents state Pettway tried unsuccessfully several times to forge a birth certificate.

A grand jury said Pettway “willfully and knowingly” seized the baby, according to a copy of the indictment from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Carlina White tracked down her birth family early last year, saying she had had a nagging feeling all her life that she was brought up by a family to which she didn’t belong. Ernie Allen, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said White’s suspicions grew after the woman who raised her could not produce a birth certificate for her.

CNN’s Adam Reiss and Susan Candiotti contributed to this report.