When we fell pregnant with our first baby Eddie, we were overjoyed and so excited to be parents for the first time.
After a long and complicated labour, our big healthy baby boy arrived on 18th January 2014. We could never have imagined what the joy and love of becoming parents would feel like. Eddie was perfect and finally our family was complete.
But that all changed in the early hours April 16th. Just three short months later, we tragically and unexpectedly lost Eddies when he was only 3 months old to SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), formerly known as cot death. In that moment, our whole life was irrevocably shattered.
On every medical test possible, Edward was perfectly healthy. We were left with no reason or attributable cause as to why our baby boy left us.
Our desperate need to understand why and to search for answers became the starting point for setting up our charity, Teddy’s Wish in July 2014. Through our grief journey we met many other parents who had lost an infant or baby and we started to understand the scale of loss here in the UK, not just SIDS, but stillbirth and neonatal losses too. And that led to a recurring thought: No parent should ever suffer the loss of a child. For those that do, they will need all the love and support possible.
Teddy’s Wish funds research into the causes of all forms of baby loss and provides support for grieving families as we believe that this is of equal importance. Grief can be a very isolating process. Losing a child even more so. It is confusing, bewildering and often it is hard to make sense of the world around you. The impact of this trauma is considerable, the pain cannot be underestimated or ever exaggerated. Each person has their own unique grief journey and support should be offered for as long as necessary, not just for the days and weeks that follow but for the months and years that follow too.
We are so delighted to be working with Petals to help deliver fully funded counselling sessions for bereaved parents. We strongly believe that bereavement support should be accessible to all parents, wherever they come from and irrespective of background. Through our new partnership, we can provide parents with as much support as needed to give them the best possible chance of rediscovering hope to live their lives again.
You can find Teddy’s Wish across all the main social media channels @teddys_wish or visit their website at https://www.teddyswish.org/
My son, aged 7, died in a road accident 69 years ago. There was no counselling available and the devastation can still be felt in my family, especially with his siblings.
We are so sorry to hear of your devastating loss, and that counselling was not available for you when your son died. The whole Petals team is sending love to your entire family.
We hope that the counselling we deliver now will help families find a way to cope – but there are so many who still do not have access to it. We are doing all we can to expand into a national service to avoid this in the future.
Thank you for being in touch.