Hello, my name is Nicela Welcome friends ABOUT ME HOME MY STORY DONATE MY PHOTOS EVENTS CONTACT My Story... Baby Nicela is our daughter, gorgeous, isn’t she. She was born on 16 March 2014. Those beautiful eyelashes she gets from her “tummy mummy” as I like to call her and will explain to Nicela when she is old enough to understand. You see we adopted baby Nicela because her mother didn’t want her. She didn’t want to see her or know if it was a little boy or girl. We met Nicela when she was three weeks old, after being discharged from hospital into the care of an emergency mother, who happened to be my friend, Karin Noonan. Nikki’s mother ran away from hospital after she was born and had to be tracked via facebook by the child welfare society. In the meanwhile Nicela lay there in hospital. Newborn and fragile without a mothers touch or love for the first weeks of her life in this strange new world. She showed no emotion when I met her, she just lay there watching us with big eyes, and those eyelashes. And she looks happy, doesn’t she. She is very happy I can assure you. We love her very much and she doesn’t know the sadness of her mother abandoning her. Her mother left her with something else besides those beautiful eyelashes. Something not so pretty. Something which caused all the parents on the adoption waiting list, 80, to be exact, to say no to her. No, Nikki does not have HIV or AIDS or one of the first things that would come to ones mind. She is not sickly and very bright indeed. Nicela has a growth on her left upper body which extends around her back to her spine, about the size of a dinner plate. Her left arm is also affected, twisted, enlarged and almost not functional at all. These folks who didn’t want to adopt her are not bad people, they were just afraid they would have to cope with the loss of a child after waiting for one so long. You see Nicela’s life expectancy was around 1 month. She is now almost 5 months old. After meeting her the first day at my friends house after I went home I had this nagging feeling that one gets when you feel you have forgotten something or left something behind. I looked for my keys, my phone, my bag and I had all of it. It bugged me for days. It was Nicela that I had left behind. She was meant to be part of our family, I know this now and we could not imagine life without her. Especially daddy. Oh is she going to be a daddy’s girl one day. The are completely in love with each other and when he enters a room no one else exists. My husband, Jacques, and I have a 20 year old son and never thought of having a baby, not in our 40’s!!! But Nicela needed us even if she only had one month to live we wanted her to be loved for that month. It turns out we needed Nicela just as much as she needed us. Nicela can only be accepted onto our medical aid once the whole adoption process is finanlized and we have her new birth certificate with our surname and the adoption has been registered at the Registrar for adoptions in Pretoria. We have been told this can take up to two years from the Welfare Society. Nicela will need surgery to have the growth removed as well as plastic surgery for her arm. Her paediatrician prescribed a new fairly untested medicine to try shrink the growth but she had side effects and was taken off the drug. Because of the large growth Nicela is physically aged 3 months. The growth on her chest and enlarged non-functional arm and hand restricts her from moving properly, she is often uncomfortable and will not be able to sit or crawl at the expected age or maybe ever. She is this gorgeous little angel with beautiful bright eyes and again, these long eye lashes but she wont be able to wear little summer dresses and cute T-shirts like I see in the shops every day and soooo much want to buy but I can’t because she can’t wear it. People point at her you know, they do it openly and don’t care about it. We want to help our little baby Nicela to be a normal little girl who can play with her friend outside without feeling different. Nikki will be raised with the values and principles of her big brother, Rick, who has sold his motorcycle to contribute towards her medical costs. Please like and follow Nicela’s page and share with us her beautiful life and the progress she makes. Contact the Webmaster - troygerber@outlook.com