A CuddleCot for Nora

UPDATE: we have had requests to keep donations open in the hopes that we can purchase 2 CuddleCots, one for our hospital in Revelstoke and an additional cot for another hospital in the BC Interior.

Thank you all for your belief in this cause, and for the love you are showing our little family and our community. We are amazed by you.

Hi, my name is Kaitlin, I'm a mum to a real-life angel named Nora Magnolia, who was stillborn on July 24, 2023. My job as Nora's parent is to find ways to keep her memory alive, to do good in her name, to help her little life have meaningful impact. I've started this fundraiser in the hopes that we can purchase a CuddleCot for our local hospital in Revelstoke, BC, in her memory. You can read a little more about our story and my hopes for this fundraiser below.

As we move through the darkest days of winter and into 2024, I'm struck by how time is passing. We're entering a year my daughter will never be alive in. Time is a sensitive thing for all parents, but especially for those who must raise their children in the stars. Time for us carries pain and fear: the feeling of continuing on living without our babies, of time passing and taking us further from the last time we held them. Our time with them is eclipsed quickly by our time without them; we fear they'll be forgotten.

Time hurts, and it is also the most precious thing we have. We cling to those treasured hours with our babies, trying to say hello and goodbye and fitting a lifetime's worth of memories in whatever time we are given. Sean and I only had about 3 hours with Nora after her birth - two at the hospital, where we were spinning with grief and I was still on heavy pain meds from my emergency C-section, unsure of what had just happened and desperately trying to remember everything about our girl before the funeral home came for her. And another hour about 5 days later, at the funeral home, where we said our last goodbye.

No amount of time will ever be enough when you were expecting a lifetime...we're grateful for the time we did have with Nora, and for the direction the nurses were able to offer us in those short hours: taking photos of her, getting casts of her hand and foot prints, playing music for her and holding her. And still, there are so many things I wish we would have done, if we had known we could and if we had more time. I wish we could have given Nora a bath, changed her, dressed her in her going home outfit, had friends and family come to meet her, hold her, and create their own memories with her.

I learned later that there are measures that exist to give loss parents more time with their babies - special cooling bassinets called CuddleCots which bring the body temperature down, slowing the process of deterioration and giving parents the gift of more time with their babes, typically up to 3 to 5 days. Our small rural hospital doesn't have one, so Sean and I, and other loss families we know here, don't have access to that kind of time. They're manufactured in the UK, are expensive to import and as a result, are not currently a standard hospital offering. There are many now across Canada, most of which have been donated by loss parents, and mainly in larger city hospitals.

As soon as I learned about them, I knew we had to get one for our community in Revy. Sean and I aren't the only ones who've lost in this little mountain town, and sadly, we won't be the last. This is part of Nora's legacy and love, and how her little life can create profound change in others'. Our community showed up so beautifully when we fundraised for the Butterfly Run Foundation in October, and I am asking again for your help to raise funds to purchase and donate a CuddleCot to our hospital.

This isn't easy for me to do...I've had this idea since very early on after Nora's birth, but haven't felt like I had the right to ask for help when there is so much suffering happening in our world right now. How can I share the story of my daughter's birth and death, and ask for support, when there are tens of thousands of missing and murdered children in Gaza? In Sudan? In the Congo?

My hope for this fundraiser is this: that you will have seen me and my family in our grief, and imagined it echoed hundreds of thousands, millions of times the world over. That you will hear me when I say time is a gift, one which none of us are entitled to...and it's a very rare thing to be able to give someone more of it, but I've found a way to give it to some of the people who need it the most.

I am humbled by the support and love shown us since Nora died. If you will consider helping in a time when help feels futile, when so much feels hopeless, when there are so many people who need it and when our story is just one in so many millions of tragedies...I thank you. Your belief in this cause is not lost on me. As someone who has been there, who has only a dozen photos and some tear-streaked, hazy anaesthetized memories of the one I love most, I assure you your gift can change someone's world.

The next family who benefits from this donation will thank you - in every extra snuggle and kiss, every story read aloud, every introduction to family and friends, each photo and footprint and lock of hair, every moment outside in the sun they have the time to take in together. Time is everything. Please help us give the next family more time.

Thank you.

All my love,

Kaitlin, Nora's mum

You can read more about the CuddleCot on the manufacturer's website here:

CuddleCot Website