Paraplegic Dad's Joy We Got Our Little Fella!

This crash survivor is so grateful

- Cloe Willets

Four years ago, Nick Stanley lay unresponsive on a busy Tauranga road as his wife Nicole knelt beside him in shock, six weeks’ pregnant with their second child. The occupational therapist had been hit by a van while cycling to work, devastatingly breaking his spine.

For the high-school sweethearts, dreams of having a large brood were cut short when they learnt Nick was paralysed from the chest down. But in October last year they received exciting news – Nicole was pregnant!

“We always wanted a big family,” says the dad of three, 34, whose eldest Rylee-May, now five, was 16 months when he was flung from his bike heading to Tauranga Hospital. “After the accident there was always something we felt was missing. Our family wasn’t ready to be finished with two kids.”

When Nick, a former surfer, found out Nicole, 33, was pregnant with their third child last October – thanks to a successful third round of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) – he was ecstatic.

“On a deeper level, you don’t want the accident to take away something as special as having children because it takes away so much else,” the doting dad tells. “We were pretty sceptical when everything kept coming back positive because you don’t want to get your hopes up. But we got our little fella!”

Nicole, a qualified teacher, gave birth to their healthy baby boy Thomas in July this year, a few months before the fourth anniversary of her hubby’s near-fatal accident.