EVERY year more than 50 babies are abandoned in the UK, the new born-infants often left wrapped in little more than a blanket and dumped on a doorstep or in a litter bin.

While there are no shortage of loving adoptive parents to provide a good home the question of who they are and why they were cruelly cast aside will always haunt them. FEMAIL tells the haunting and heart-rending stories of three of these children - dubbed 'foundlings' - each abandoned in a different decade.

Today is the first account, which will continue on Monday and Tuesday.

Nicki Paddick, 32, lives in a four-bedroom semi in Oxford with her husband Martin, 35, a groundsman, and their five children - Daniel, 13, Curtis, ten, identical twins Liam and Nathan, seven, and Amy, four.

Nicki was found abandoned in the ladies toilet at London's West Ham Park on 8 November 1969 when she was just two-hours-old.

As I held my new-born baby daughter in my arms I was overwhelmed with love for her. She was so tiny, vulnerable and precious. I couldn't imagine ever giving her up for any reason and felt fiercely protective.

She looked just like me when I was a baby and I wondered if, when I was born, my own mother had ever looked into my face and recognised her own.

Sadly, I have never known. I only found out when I was 29 that I had been abandoned at birth in a stark toilet block on a freezing cold night. Whereas all of my children have come into this world surrounded by love, I was left in a carrier-bag wrapped in a blood-soaked curtain.

When my daughter Amy was born four years ago I only knew I'd been adopted and that made me feel emotional enough as I held her. Had I known the full, shocking facts then, I'm sure I would have felt even more numb with disbelief that this was the way I'd entered the world.

I grew up as a much-loved only child and it never occurred to me there was anything unusual about the way I'd begun my life. During my childhood, my parents never once hinted they were not my real mum and dad.

Even now I know I was abandoned at birth, I still find it hard to believe I am a foundling. It seems unreal, like a fairy story. Not the type of thing ordinary young mums like me find out in their 20s.

I remember so vividly that day six years ago when, aged 26, my perception of who I am, began to change. I'd gone round to my parents' house because I needed my birth certificate to apply for a new passport.

I was sure Mum had it, but she was away, staying with relatives following the death of her brother. Dad was out too, so I let myself in and began to rummage in the box where Mum kept her personal papers.

It was stuffed with old letters, some addressed to our previous house in West Ham, where we'd lived before moving to Oxford when I was two. I glanced inside them, thinking my birth certificate had become entwined.

Not that I was snooping. I'd always been close to my parents and never imagined they had secrets from me. Yet there it was, a yellowing letter from Newham Social Services thanking them for fostering a baby. It was dated 1969 - the year of my birth. The baby, like me, was called Nicola.

I stared at it, my hands trembling as I re-read the words. I knew what they meant.

Numb with shock, I left my parents' house for the short drive home. As soon as I arrived, I blurted out to my husband, Martin. "I'm adopted!"

'I know,' he replied quietly. We've been together since our teens and he admitted he'd heard a rumour years before. My gran had allegedly let something slip at the local hairdressers, there was gossip.

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