On 2nd May last year I gave birth to my healthy baby boy. On 2nd May last year, my friend Jennie gave birth to her healthy baby girl. There was no difference. Both babies born healthy, loved, cherished and cared for with whole hearts.

My baby sits before me today playing with my television remote control, he smiles up at me and giggles, calls me Mummaaaay and is healthy, loved and cherished. Jennie’s baby slipped away one night when she fell asleep and my friend is left with a heart that is not just broken but irreparably shattered. Jennies baby, Matilda Mae, is loved and cherished but she is no longer here because with the saddest story I have ever heard she passed away from cot death.

Jennie is, with the strongest heart despite being in a million pieces, raising money for the charity The Lullaby Trust. She is raising money so that families like hers can be helped through the darkest time anyone could ever see and she is raising money in the hope that one day, hopefully soon, there will be a breakthrough into this tragic circumstance that sees six hundred families just like Jennies, devastated every year.

People think this is rare and it is but it it isn’t rare enough. Six hundred loved, cherished and healthy babies fall victim to this most awful tragedy every single year. That’s a school full of healthy, happy children. This isn’t right, how could this ever be acceptable?

Nothing will bring Matilda Mae back to where she should be, nothing will mend my friends heart but something could be done to help find out why, help stop it happening again and go some way into making baby Tilda’s life make a difference to others. We don’t need to make her life matter, it already does, oh it so does matter… But we do need to make it make a difference!

Tomorrow Jennie and her family are walking a mile in memory of Matilda Mae. Tomorrow an auction starts in Baby Tilda’s name and we all need to pay attention, to do something, to donate something, to help make her life make that difference for other people. This will be her legacy…

As you cuddle your baby think ‘There but for the grace of God go I’. Don’t think of my friend as ‘poor Jennie’, she is not ‘poor Jennie’ but do think of her as heart broken Jennie, heart broken Jennie who needs your help and that help you can give.

Text MMLT79 £1 to 70070, visit Matilda’s ‘Just Giving Page‘, and read Jennie’s blog to find out more about the auction.

Make a difference, help make baby Tilda make a difference…

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