Spending Precious Time

Spending time with your son or daughter is such a precious thing.
Spending time with them after they die feels even more of a precious. Your son or daughter dying is something that no parent wants to think about but I know when my son died, I was very anxious about the very little time I had left with him before he was buried. In the hospital ward, you can only spend a small amount of time with your child before they need to be transferred to the mortuary. Mortuaries also have opening and closing hours so again families are restricted to the times they can see their son/daughter For some families this can be really distressing and the use of a cuddle cot for babies and a cooling system for a child/teenager/adult can prolong the time the parent has with their son or daughter on the ward.

I had previously heard of cuddle cots and the comfort they brought families who had experienced premature or still born births. The cuddle cot allows the family to take their baby home and this is invaluable to those parents. I had never heard of a covercool until I did some research into what was available for toddlers, teenagers/adults. A covercool works similar to a cuddle cot but it is larger so it can be used on older children. I recently spoke with a family who were able to bring their child home for a few days before their funeral thanks to the use of a covercool and I wish I had known about them sooner.

For me, I didn’t want to see Jack in a coffin so we were able to bring him home and have him in his bed the night before the funeral. The house was busy with people coming and going all night and that’s a regret that I live with, I wish I had been able to spend more time with my son that night. By having a cooling system, people could bring their son/daughter home for a longer time and allow more precious time with their child and to say their final goodbyes.

Sadly many children, die in our children’s hospitals every day so we would like to purchase and donate a covercool system to the A & E department at the Queen Elizabeth Sick Kids as we know this is something they need and would get great use out of. This would allow families to spend more time with their son/daughter on the ward before they need to be transferred to the mortuary. In the future, Brightest Star would also like to purchase a Covercool system and Cuddle Cot to store at Hulks Haven in Linwood so funeral parlours and families can use it to take the child home before their funeral service. Sadly something like this is not seen as a necessity to the NHS but to so many families, these can give comfort during the most traumatic time of a parents life.

A cuddle cot costs £1570 and a cooling system £5090 so we really need your help to make this possible, nobody knows if or when they might personally need use of it. Some of our past and future fundraising will go towards this and we have set up a justgiving page especially for this appeal. If you can donate and share this post, then every little will help.

I wasn't intending posting this so soon but the justgiving page seems to got out on social media so thought it would be best to put it out with the story x

https://www.justgiving.com/…/br…/CuddleCotAndCoverCoolAppeal