Margot’s 5th Birthday: The Little Girl Behind MargotLoves
Today, 15 August 2026, Margot would have been five years old.
Five.
It is one of those ages that feels impossible to imagine.
Old enough to be telling me exactly what she wanted for her birthday. Old enough to have favourite colours, favourite foods and probably very strong opinions about what her birthday cake should look like.
Instead, today I am spending her birthday doing something that has become one of the biggest ways I honour her: working on MargotLoves.
Updating the website.
Working on new products.
Improving our photographs.
Writing about the keepsakes we create.
And making sure that the business carrying her name continues to grow.
Because without Margot, MargotLoves would never have existed.
The little girl behind the name
Margot was born sleeping on 15 August 2021.
She weighed 4 lb 12 oz.
Those numbers will never just be numbers to me.
Her name, her birthday, her weight and the little details surrounding her birth became some of the most precious things I had.
When you lose a baby, there are so many memories you expected to make that suddenly do not exist.
There are no first steps.
No first birthday.
No first day at school.
No photographs appearing year after year showing how much they have grown.
Instead, you hold tightly to what you do have.
A name.
A date.
A photograph.
A hospital band.
A handprint.
A footprint.
A weight.
And sometimes those tiny details become enormously important.
That understanding eventually became part of the reason MargotLoves exists.
Why birth weight mattered so much
One of the things I found particularly difficult after losing Margot was remembering exactly how she had felt.
You remember holding your baby.
You remember how tiny they were.
But memory changes.
And as time passes, something as simple as their birth weight can begin to feel strangely abstract.
You know the number.
But what does 4 lb 12 oz actually feel like in your arms?
That is what makes a birth weight bear so different from an ordinary personalised teddy.
The name and date tell part of the story.
The weight makes it physical.
A teddy weighted to the same weight as your baby allows you to pick something up and feel that number again.
For a parent whose child is growing quickly, it can be a beautiful reminder of how small they once were.
For a parent whose baby died, it can mean something entirely different.
Sometimes it is one of the few physical ways left to remember how tiny their baby felt.
How MargotLoves began
MargotLoves grew from that understanding.
What started with Margot has now become something much bigger than I could ever have imagined.
Over the years, I have created thousands of personalised weighted keepsakes for families around the world.
Birth weight bears.
Premature baby keepsakes.
Tiny miscarriage bears.
Baby loss memorial bears.
Weighted anxiety teddies.
And personalised keepsakes for babies who are now very much grown.
Every order is different.
Behind one bear might be a mum ordering a keepsake for her newborn.
Behind another might be parents remembering a baby born many years ago.
One might be ordered for a premature baby who once weighed just a few hundred grams and is now a thriving child.
Another might carry the name of a baby who never came home.
The stories are all different.
But every single bear represents somebody.
More than a teddy bear
From the outside, MargotLoves sells personalised weighted teddies.
But that description has never quite felt big enough.
Because when I see an order come through, I don’t just see a teddy.
I see a baby’s name.
I see their birth weight.
I see the date somebody became a mum or dad.
Sometimes I see a very tiny weight and immediately know that there may be an incredibly difficult story behind it.
Sometimes the personalisation says everything.
Sometimes it says almost nothing.
That is why our bears are individually hand weighted and personalised.
They aren’t simply pulled from a shelf at a standard weight.
Each one is prepared for the baby or person whose details have been given to us.
For many customers, that bear will eventually sit on a shelf.
For others, it will be held on birthdays, anniversaries and difficult days.
That responsibility has never been lost on me.
Five birthdays without Margot
Birthdays after baby loss are strange.
The world sees a date on a calendar.
You see the child who should be another year older.
Today I should have a five-year-old.
Instead, I have a business bearing her name.
That will never be a replacement for her.
Nothing could be.
But I am incredibly proud that something born from such an awful loss has gone on to acknowledge the existence of so many other babies.
Every time somebody tells me that their bear means something to them, Margot is part of that story too.
Every order helps keep her name being spoken.
And on days like today, that matters more than I can explain.
The babies behind our bears
One of the things I want to focus on even more as MargotLoves grows is the real stories behind the bears.
Because birth weight keepsakes are only really understood when you see the person behind them.
The premature baby who is now running around.
The newborn who has already doubled their birth weight.
The baby who is deeply loved but could not stay.
The mum who orders a bear years later because she suddenly realises she wants to remember exactly how tiny her child once was.
The grandparent buying something for their daughter.
The sibling growing up knowing the name of the brother or sister who came before them.
Those are the stories that make MargotLoves what it is.
If you have a MargotLoves bear, you are part of her story too
There are MargotLoves bears in homes all over the world now.
Some have been there for years.
Some were only made this week.
Every time I think about that, it feels quite surreal.
A little business carrying my daughter’s name has travelled much further than she ever got the chance to.
And perhaps that is one of the most beautiful things I can give her.
A legacy.
Not one defined only by the way she died, but by love, remembrance and thousands of families being given something tangible to represent their own babies.
Today is for Margot
So today, rather than stepping away from MargotLoves, I am spending part of Margot’s fifth birthday working on it.
Improving it.
Planning for it.
Trying to make it easier for families searching for a birth weight bear or baby loss keepsake to find us.
Because every new family that discovers MargotLoves discovers her name too.
Five years ago today, Margot changed my life completely.
Five years later, she is still changing it.
And through MargotLoves, her little name continues to travel into homes around the world.
Happy 5th birthday, Margot.
You should be here.
You are loved beyond words.
And everything MargotLoves becomes will always begin with you.
In memory of Margot — 15 August 2021.
If you would like to create a keepsake for your own baby, you can explore our personalised birth weight bears, baby loss keepsakes and tiny memorial bears at MargotLoves.co.uk.
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