Katherine Heigl reveals photos of her newly adopted baby, Naleigh

Actress Katherine Heigl, 30, and her husband of two years in December, Josh Kelley, 29, have adopted a special needs daughter from South Korea, little Naleigh, 10 months. Instead of selling the photos to a magazine, they released the photos themselves on the website for the animal foundation Katherine founded with her mother, the “Jason Debus Heigl Foundation.” It’s named after Katherine’s late older brother Jason, who died in a car accident at the age of 15 in 1986. Katherine’s charity runs a special ranch for dogs in which they rescue and re-train “medium to large dogs from high-kill shelters throughout Southern California.”

On the website for Katherine’s foundation, she explains that Naleigh is a nickname for the baby’s full name, Nancy Lee, which is a mix of her mother’s name, Nancy, and her adopted sister’s middle name, Margaret Leigh. Margaret is also from Korea and Katherine once said that adoption is something she’s “always planned.”

Meet Katherine Heigl’s new baby, Naleigh.

The Grey’s Anatomy actress and husband Josh Kelley have released the first photos of their daughter, a special-needs child they adopted from South Korea, on Heigl’s fundraising site.

“She was actually born the day before me in November, which I thought was really serendipitous and just kind of like a sign,” Heigl, 30, said when announcing the news of her adoption on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last week.

In addition to four intimate photos of the family, the site explains that Naleigh is just a nickname for Nancy Leigh – named after Heigl’s mother Nancy and Heigl’s sister Margaret Leigh.

[From People]

Kaiser wondered in our last story on Naleigh – is it pronounced “Naw-Lee” or “Neigh-Lee”? Heigl said on Ellen that her name will be pronounced like “Neigh-Lee” and that she first saw photos of her six months ago and had not yet met Naleigh at that point. She said that normally the process of adopting from South Korea takes much longer, but that her daughter has special needs and that “because of that, it all moved so much faster. They wanted to get her to us as quickly as possible.”

Katherine Heigl is not my favorite person and I generally find her insufferable, it’s something I just can’t not mention when talking about her, but this is a very wonderful thing she’s doing and she’ll make all the difference in that little girl’s life. She also deserves a lot of credit for releasing the photos on the website for her charity. Best wishes to Katherine, Josh and little Naleigh. These photos are just adorable.

Here is Katherine’s adoption announcement on Ellen last week: