When 10 Families Rejected This Sick Baby Girl, This Couple Stepped up to Adopt Her
When baby Olivia was born with HIV, 10 families refused to adopt her due to her sickness. One couple stepped up and adopted Olivia into their happy home.
Like the old song goes, all you need is love -- but some of us don’t get nearly enough of that love, and it’s often those who need that love the most.
Baby Olivia was born with HIV in 2014. As an underweight 28-day-old infant, she was in need of a family and a home, but she had already been rejected by 10 prospective adoptive families due to her HIV status.
But as heart-breaking and dire as this all may sound for poor baby Olivia, she was about to meet her true family.
Olivia's perfect parents were waiting for her
Damian Pighin and Ariel Vijarra of Santa Fe, Argentina, were more than ready to add to their family. They had been looking to adopt since 2011, and instantly fell in love with newborn Olivia.
“As soon as I saw her, I felt that she was part of my life,” Ariel told the media in Argentina. “The connection was immediate. We held her in our arms, gave her the bottle, and she looked at us with her eyes open without crying.”
Olivia's new lease on life
Finding a loving family was life-changing for Olivia in so many ways. Once her new parents took her home, Olivia started to respond to her HIV treatment, gained weight, and a few years later, the virus is reportedly no longer detectable in her blood.
Despite the stigma that drove away the 10 other prospective couples from adopting Olivia, in reality, people who are HIV positive can live long, healthy lives without ever infecting others provided they are on the right treatment plan -- just like Olivia surely will!
How Olivia inspired her parents
Though Damian and Ariel struggled for years to adopt a child before they met Olivia, once she came into their lives, their family began to grow much more quickly.
Just a year after Olivia entered their family, Damian and Ariel adopted another baby girl whose biological mother had seen the news about Olivia's adoption. She knew that Damian and Ariel were the perfect parents for baby Victoria.
Olivia will turn five later this month while her little sister Victoria turned five in February. Their happy family is a powerful lesson about looking past stigmas and keeping
Things can look pretty dire at times, but there's always reason to hope!
More inspiring adoption stories:
- Nurse Adopts Hospitalized Baby Girl Who Went Months Without Any Visitors
- Abused Teen Gets Adopted by the Police Officer Who Drove Her to Foster Care
- After This Woman Adopted a Newborn Baby, She Gave Shelter to Her Daughter’s Homeless Birth Parent
- This Nurse Delivered a Baby Boy — Then She Took Him Home
