Lost toddler's special bunny...I feel awful

[pear6782]

So as the title says...I lost my toddler's bunny today. He is 2.5 and speech delayed. It goes everywhere with him....he sleeps with it, he plays with it, feeds it, puts it on play equipment. I've kept it safe for so long. I always have my eye on it, no matter where we go.

But today, we were running late for an appointment and I think it fell out of the car. I called the hospital we went to but reception said nothing had been handed in. Went back to nursery where I picked him up to track the roads but no luck.

I feel awful. We have other copies of this bunny, but they aren't ruffled and worn like his 'original' bunny so he knows the difference (and I've been trying to make them look rough for ages but its not the same as the original).

Has anyone else done this? Did your toddler cope? He is so speech delayed I won't be able to explain so it will be a case of wanting it at bedtime and I won't have it. As odd as it sounds, I feel sad for the lost bunny...that it's gone and we'll never get it back (I think I need to give my head a shake).

Any positive stories out there?

@IncessantNameChanger

No help now but try this for future beloved soft toys

Where did you get that label from please?

I've been washing my boys spare bunny in with every dark load of washing for the past few weeks and it's definitely roughing it up.

@DeepaBeesKit

For future - unpick a seam in bunny. Insert one of those tracker key ring Tile things linked to your phone. Sew bunny back up. Thank me later....

Don't they run out of battery though?

I think you get an alert that the battery is running low. That’s a brilliant idea though. I’ve got an air tag and you can make it play a sound from your phone so you can find it. Genius.

Just don’t put it in the wash. Can’t imagine that’ll do it much good.

So so glad he was found

My DS has a beloved snuggly - it came with him when we adopted him at 4 - he loves it so much even now as a teenager as it's the only thing he has had since little .

He wanted to take it on our first family holiday overseas - I was so terrified that it would get lost/damaged that I wouldn't let him - I said snuggly should stay at home to look after the house for us and also to party with the other toys (had helped that he like Toy Story) @ as a compromise he took a small white bear with him . All was going well until Day 2 when the bear was nowhere to be found . We searched everywhere and made countless trips to reception every day to see if he had been handed in but with no success . Then after about a week we returned to our room one day to find the small bear sitting in the middle of my sons bed with a packet of haribo - cue much hugging of bear by DS. The bear was so much whiter than before - next time I passed guest relations they took me to one side and said that the laundry firm they used had found our little bear inside a machine

I was just so glad I had insisted on snuggly staying home- even within our house he has got lost sometimes

My 4Yo DS has a monkey comforter who goes most places but stays at home with me to work when he's at school (and previously nursery until last week).

When he got attached to this monkey at 3 months old I found out where it was purchased and bought 2 more so I always had backups if 1 got lost and also because he had reflux so they constantly needed to be cleaned. I still rotate them round all the time so they all get the same worn out look.

He has spotted the spares in the washing machine or on the airer but we just say they are monkey's cousins. So monkey comes to say hi to his cousins.

We did have a panic moment a few months ago. We have a dummy clip attached to his car seat so that he couldn't drop monkey (same when he was in his pram when he was younger) but we started forgetting to clip monkey onto the strap as DS got older. One day DH was driving with DS in the car with the windows open and DS decided monkey wanted to have a look out the window. I was on the phone to them at the time and heard a terrible scream and then crying when monkey ended up out the window. DH turned the car around and went looking for monkey. Luckily it was on a quiet road so he was easily found, but I will never forget that scream of heartbreak from DS. And we now never forget to clip monkey onto the dummy clip anymore.