TW: Baby Loss.

When Steph started Don’t Buy Her Flowers back in 2014, creating care packages for New Mums, bereavement wasn’t initially something she’d considered. Customers started to send gifts to offer comfort in grief, and then when Jen, Founder of Baby Loss charity Teddy’s Wish got in touch to create something specifically send out to bereaved parents, it totally made sense.  

We are proud to have worked together since 2020. Here, both Jen and Steph describe how the partnership came about: 

Jen: When Eddie died in April 2014, I remember receiving flowers from well-meaning friends but all I could think about in that moment was ‘great, something else that is going to die’.  

But I fondly remember receiving a beautiful care package from an old school friend who I hadn’t seen for years. The package included a book about baby loss, a beautifully scented candle and tea bags. I remember in that moment feeling incredibly touched that my friend Kat had reached out to me in such a thoughtful and caring way. This is something that I will always cherish and remember.  

Fast forward to 2020, and at this point, we had been running our charity Teddy’s Wish for 6 years. The charity was set up to honour Eddie’s memory, to help others in his name, by funding research into the causes of baby loss and providing bereavement support for families devastated by the loss of their baby.  

As part of our support offering we started to think about how we can support parents beyond our counselling and retreats. I thought about the care package I had received from Kat and wanted to do something similar for other bereaved parents.   

I had started following Steph on Instagram and loved the concept of Don’t Buy Her Flowers. Whilst Steph had set up her company for different reasons, the sentiment of not buying flowers for a gift was the same. I approached Steph with our concept of ‘The Teddy’s Wish Baby Loss Package’ and the rest, as they say, is history.  

Three years on, we are proud of our growing partnership with Don’t Buy Her Flowers to help bereaved parents in their most devastating time of need. Our packages have been lovingly created to let parents know they are not alone and we are thinking of them. Anyone can buy a package, and at Teddy’s Wish we also send out packages to parents who have recently lost a baby to stillbirth, neonatal death or SIDS. This small gesture of sending packages to parents, paid for by Teddy’s Wish, make a huge difference. And we are so grateful to Steph and her team for their donation of each package sold which allows us to continue our precious work.  

Steph: When I set up Don’t Buy Her Flowers, I hadn’t considered that people would be looking for gifts for the more difficult occasions, such as bereavement. It was actually our customers who started using us to send a TLC package when someone had died – customers would get in touch to ask if they could send a package to someone going through miscarriage and of course it made sense, that they need TLC and thoughtfulness. We’re very conscious that it’s a sensitive subject and never overtly marketed ourselves for this, but I absolutely know that a gift box that offers comfort and things to help someone relax beats flowers a hundred times over when it comes to someone grieving.  

I receive messages every week from people who’ve been bereaved, often with pictures of their living room looking like a florist, and they always say they feel guilty for complaining but they don’t want any more flowers. One message I had a few years ago, just before we started working with Teddy’s Wish, really stood out. It was from a lady who was miscarrying, and she was angry. Angry at what was happening and angry about the flowers that kept arriving. She didn’t want to have to look after something and then watch it die – she specifically said she wanted to watch trashy TV, eat chocolate and cry but instead she was ‘shuffling around the kitchen arranging f*cking flowers that I don’t want’. 

When Jen got in touch to ask if we could work together on a Baby Loss Package, it felt absolutely right. It made sense for us to work with experts who really understood what might work in a gift box for someone going through an incredibly tough time, as well as raise money for the charity. It reassures customers that they won’t upset or offend the recipient. We’ve also seen an increase in workplaces sending gifts for baby loss and I think that says a lot about the work Teddy’s Wish and other campaigners have done to help people see that acknowledging a person’s grief is really important, and not something to be swept under the carpet for fear of upsetting someone. 

Click HERE for more information about Teddy’s Wish and the amazing work they do. 

And if you’d like to send someone a care package, click HERE to find out about our refreshed Teddy’s Wish x The Other Mother’s Baby Loss Care Package.