It's been quite the journey for a little boy who will turn 4 years old in January. He arrived at his new home in Newington on Dec. 5 after being raised in a Bulgarian orphanage.
Single mother and yoga instructor Nykki Poole was researching adoption when a friend mentioned special needs adoptions. It put her in a direction to motherhood she hadn’t considered.
Poole now has three sons: Andrew, Bodhi and Elliott. All three boys have Down syndrome and were put up for adoption when they were born.
“They’re just little fighters, these kids, and they really need people to advocate for them and they need people to love them, and they need people that are going to walk through the fire with them,” said Poole.
She first met Elliott in April on a trip to his orphanage in Bulgaria. She held and rocked him to sleep for a few days after lunch, something he would not normally allow. It was then Poole realized that they needed each other.
She raised thousands of dollars for each of the adoptions through the generosity of family, friends and even strangers. Poole first shared her story on the crowdfunding page GoFundMe and later started a second page when she realized the additional costs of making an additional adoption.
Finally, her shy little orphan made it to the U.S. to begin a new life full of love.
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“He’s going to have an amazing life. He would have ended up in an institution, you know, and not survived that. I know he would not have survived that because he’s so fragile,” she explained.
In her first few weeks with Elliot, Poole has taught him to chew soft foods and pick up food with his hands. She said the family has had emotional moments of all kinds.
“It has been interesting, it has been amazing and it’s been scary, and it’s been sad,” Poole said.
