ITV’s popular breakfast programme, Good Morning Britain this morning (19 July) championed a special greeting card range on air that has been created and published by Hallmark in answer to the sensitive issue of what to send when someone has given birth to a premature or sick baby.
Inspired by the personal story of Good Morning Britain’s weather presenter Laura Tobin, whose little girl Charlotte was born three months prematurely, Hallmark was inspired to create a collection of greeting cards with families like Laura’s in mind. And what’s more, Hallmark is donating 20p from the sale of each card to the premature and sick baby charity, Bliss.
Laura said: “Our baby Charlotte was born extremely premature, three months early, and it was a very stressful time. Friends and family want to offer support but it’s hard to know what to say and do, especially as we were in hospital with Charlotte every day.”
Laura highlighted how such sensitive situations calls for a different type of baby card design as sending a ‘traditional’ baby card featuring a baby or cute images “may be upsetting to parents of premature babies as it reminds them of what they are missing out on – a baby at home. Also cards like ‘thinking of you’, could imply the worst. Quite a few people sent blank cards with personal messages inside as they wanted to let us know they were thinking of us.”
The idea for the collaboration was sparked when one of the Good Morning Britain team said how hard it had been to find a suitable card to send when Charlotte was born. “I thought it was such a lovely idea, tears came to my eyes. Having special premature baby cards will mean people know they are offering support to the parents at what is a very emotional time,” said Charlotte.
Writers from Hallmark’s in-house creative studio talked to a number of parents, whose babies were born premature or sick, in order to try and gain more understanding of their experiences and how they felt while their baby was in neonatal care. The editorial team then worked with the publisher’s illustrators and creative team to incorporate these insights to ensure that the resultant designs on the cards were absolutely right for the people receiving the cards.
The cards will be available Hallmark’s independent retail stockists as well as selected Tesco, Morrisons and Amazon.
Ruth Turner-Blood, manager of the Writing Studio at Hallmark said of the collection, “We are incredibly proud of the cards we have created to raise money for Bliss. We’d like to thank Laura and all the wonderful families with their incredible babies, for being so open in sharing their experiences. We hope that families will feel supported by these cards and that they’ll treasure them forever.”
