Five years ago
Our beautiful baby girl
Died
She was 9 months old
The night she died
My heart broke in two
And my world fell apart
The kindness of strangers
Close friends and family
Kept me going
Helped me exist
People helped us do the day to day
But people also went above and beyond
People from all walks of life
Came together
And shouted our daughter’s name out loud
People like Mia Tui
Who named one of their beautiful bags
Matilda Mae
In June 2013
I was given the very first ever
I now own several of these beautiful bags in different colours
I like to carry Matilda Mae with me in this way
And now you could be able to too
Over on my Instagram feed
Mia Tui are giving away two bags
In Tilda’s name
As part of the #matildamaegiveaway
This giveaway has been running for a month
The amount of time between Tilda’s death
And her final goodbye
The time we were left in limbo
Not quite knowing what we were meant to do
How we were meant to carry on
The time I spent writing, rewriting
Planning and re planning Tilda’s funeral
The time we only made it through each day
With the help of others
The time all David wanted to do was sleep
The time I could not sleep
A month of days of tears and cries
Shouts and screams
Such raw agony and pain
I can still feel it now
The time each year that I am so aware
How long we waited
While our baby’s body was examined
Cut open
Stitched back together
Trying to find a cause of death
The time we chose a coffin
A casket
The time our living children suffered such confusion
How Esther would not go in the bath
How William could not name all the people coming in and out of our house
And so he just called them the colour of their top layer or coat
A month is such a long time
To be caught between life and death
I feel now that I have been caught there
For five years
Not knowing how to be happy
Not knowing how to live again
This year has been especially hard
Five years
Our beautiful daughter would be almost 6 now
Sometimes none of this feels real
I feel like I am writing fiction
About another mother
A different family
Some other little girl
And yet in my broken heart I know
It is me
It is us
She was ours
Our Matilda Mae
Please help us to continue shouting her name out loud
By joining in the #matildamaegiveaway on Instagram
And trying to win a Mia Tui bag in her name
Thank you x