In an interview with Daily Mail Australia, Mr Connolly said he was aware he’d done a “really good thing” but “felt guilty getting all this attention”.
“We’ve had all these messages which has made us realise there are so many other people in this situation, I don’t want people to think it’s a unique thing,” he said.
Mr Connolly admitted he had taken on “the father role as you’d imagine,” but added: “[My cousin] does 90 per cent of the work – and if it’s one or two years of my life I have to put on hold to make sure two lives are going to be saved it’s nothing at all.”
On Facebook, the cousin said she was “the luckiest girl in the world”.
“Since carrying this gorgeous boy, all of my friends kept telling me that he would be taken away from me,” she said. “This made my pregnancy very difficult. All I wanted was to give this little man a better life than I had – a second chance was all I wanted. Thank-you, Tommy for everything, and for helping me with my spelling.”
Mr Connolly has previously cycled from Brisbane to Sydney to raise money for underprivileged school children in Ecuador, and on the Gofundme page his brother said he had “always been the most generous one”.
“I set this page up to give Tommy the kick start that he needs and to try and give this little baby boy the life that his mum never had,” he wrote.
“If everyone out there gave just a small amount it could create a life for a new born baby boy that almost missed out had it not been for my brother Tommy stepping in to rescue him from an uncertain future with no family there to protect him.”
