Rhianna’s Birthday and the Teddy Bears

In 25 days Rhianna is three.

I have already blogged about the pain of having a child not here on their birthday and the pain of buying flowers here. Since I wrote the post we have been trying to find something for Rhianna’s birthday.

Baba wants her to have a present, in fact we all do.

She will get her flowers, as she does every year and throughout the year, and we will have a birthday cake, as we do every year. But we were still stuck with what else to do.

We wanted something more, but her grave is too small for garden things, and we don’t have a great garden so I don’t want things for the garden at home.

We seemed to be at a gridlock of where to go or what to buy.

Then it hit me that I knew what to get all along.

When we first lost Rhianna we were recommended Aching Arms, where we could get a teddy bear to remember Rhianna Lily, it was something I was really interested in. But actually never needed as my best friend and Baba’s Godmother thought the same thing, and actually brought us a teddy bear to remember Rhianna herself.

Even though Rhianna’s bear sits on our shelf, it can be brought down whenever and is hugged when needed and brings a lot of comfort into our homes.

Aching Arms provides bears to midwives to give to newly bereaved mothers, and bereaved mothers can have dedicated bears given to them from one mother to another. They rely on donations via their fundraising page and bears being physically donated to them, it seemed the perfect present.

And what three-year old girl doesn’t love teddy bears.

After a quick email to discuss how to donate a bear, it was decided that this was the perfect present for Rhianna this year. We discussed it with Baba, explained the process and he loved it as well. Which made it even more appropriate.

So this year our darling girl for your third birthday there will be a teddy bear brought from Mummy and Daddy, one from your big brother Baba, and one from your little brother Boo. They will be wrapped up and sent off to Aching Arms where they will be passed on to a Mummy and Daddy who are missing their baby as much as we miss you. And we hope that for many years they will get some comfort from the teddy bear we brought them because of you.

To be honest there really couldn’t be a better present for you.