To buy a second comforter for outdoors

[Mildred01]

My lo has become permanently attached to his ‘bunny’ in the last couple of months. We’ve nearly lost him once but luckily someone found him and put him high on the side so we found him!

It comes everywhere with us but obviously I don’t want to risk losing it, he’s also starting nursery soon and am worried it might get lost.
Would it be silly to buy another one for outdoors/ nursery so bunny stays at home or do you think ds would just want the original one?

I initially thought of getting a Jellycat rabbit for nursery and explaining you’re starting somewhere new, here’s a new bunny to take etc but now I’m thinking just get the same as original bunny.
Or is it mad and just take normal bunny out or not at all?
But he’s started to get really upset if bunny’s not around I mean he literally comes everywhere with us.

has anyone else bought two comforters or am I just bonkers for considering a second?

I realise I have said the word bunny quite a lot. Apologies!

It’s a slippery slope. We bought a ‘spare’ that DD found and wouldn’t part with. She somehow has 4 now 🤣 and she still sleeps with all of them every night and uses them when overwhelmed/tired - and she’s 8 now!

Buy a little dog collar to put round bunny’s neck with your contact details on should it get lost. Or get a sticker with name and number.

Oh yes, have at least 3, and cycle them around so they’re all equally loved….

We used to use a dummy clip - shove the bunny’s head through the ring meant for the dummy and then clip it onto something.

we still lost 2/3 and have one precious one left. My 14 year old would DIE if I spoke of it in public but he loved them when small.

Yeah, we had two of DD's favourite and rotated them.

"Leave X at home with Mummy today for a bath and take bunny to nursery instead". Then when a slightly less worn version was handed to her that evening he was just clean from his "bath"!

We had 2 of DS's favourite toy.

When we couldn't find either the night before our first holiday abroad, DH drove 30 mins to the shop and got there just before it closed. Ended up buying 3 more 😂

100% get another one

our Bunny was called Flora and we had 3 but one had my daughters name embroidered on it and was lovingly called Nursery Flora and she was the one that went to nursery. The other 2 got rotated at home so they were equally worn

Yanbu. I once thought we had lost dd favourite teddy. I remember even the traffic warden was very sympathetic and helped me look. He never left the house after that!

We had 3 that were rotated and washed so all got worn equally.

I'd get another and get it with dc as much as possible to get your own smells on it / make it ‘worn’ and then rotate. If you can’t rotate keep the original at home as sleepy/ night bunny.

Thank you all. I felt daft for asking but I absolutely love this bunny as it was the first gift I bought him. I actually nearly cried when I thought we’d lost him because well, it was his first gift and this is most likely my only child so I’m a bit pfb with everything!

I love the ideas of teething ring and embroidered name! I thought about embroidering baby’s name but not so skilled, I still might as I love that personal touch.

also love the idea with contact details. After we nearly lost him I was shouting he needs a bracelet with my phone number!

Silly question, do you all get the same replacement? Or a different one? I suppose a different comforter defeats the purpose of a replacement doesn’t it!

I wouldn't but then the rule here was they stayed at home. I just didn't want to risk them getting lost. It was fine

My eldest was in love with a toy dog, we bought a few identical ones and rotated them round so they all got equally loved (manky) so she couldn't tell the difference between them. My youngest is fixated on a little doll, so again, we now have 3 identical and rotate them so they all get equally gross.
It is helpful, not just from the perspective of losing one obvs, but also one getting left behind and not able to collect until next day, or even when sick 🤢 means you can wash one and provide an identical replacement to comfort them whilst poorly.

How ‘well loved’ is the current one? We had one kid where we tried this, but it didn’t work. They screamed and physically threw it away in horror. We had tried to pre-empt the ‘different appearance’ by saying they’d had a special bath to get all clean but alas, the kid did not want a bar of the thing. The idea was to use this one, to get to pretty much the same state as the current one so they would then be interchangeable if one was lost. Didn’t work🤣. So we had to do some story about sending it back to be like before the ‘special bath’, and then we lived in terror for years that it would get lost.

We got the same one for nursery when DD was having trouble settling. I also brought a spare one for home in case of sickness or losing it. She finally stopped needing it recently at 3 and now has a huge selection of soft toys to choose from at bed time.

My DD has a comforter (kind of a soft bear that's holding a little cloth) for home and a soft toy puppy that comes on outings with us - she understands which one "lives" where and it works well!

My DS1 is now 19. But when he was a baby toddler he liked a particular bunny, we ended up with a whole bag of bunnies. As he sucked the corners and objected (woke up and cried for a new one) once all 4 corners were wet!! Some nights we went through 3 or 4!!

I bought some from eBay. I think we have over 20.

Don't send a jellycat to nursery as it will get lost (or 'lost' if it looks reasonably new).

We have two comforters that are interchangeable; DS is now 4 and still likes them at times. I think I’ve bought 5 over the years and lost 3; what I learnt is that they need to both be in use at the same time and it’s actually better when your DC know there is more than one.

Buy 5 and rotate them, keep one for home, one for nursery and have some spares.

Yes be careful though. We bought spare comforters in case we lost the original one. 4 spare. Dd found them all at once by accident. She now has 6 comforters - 3 giraffes, 1 elephant, 1 Teddy and 1 dinosaur. She’s 10 🤣

Yes but at one point DS wanted to take his whole bag of 20 bunnies to bed.

Hi and thanks for all of your advice and stories about teddies and ‘spares’!

Just came on to say that my plan completely backfired! Although bunny has been sleeping with us, dd very much realises it’s not the same. It does look beautiful, soft and fluffy compared to the original which looks horribly manky!
she either takes the original out still, or takes them both. When we leave one in the car - it’s always the new one. The new bunny has joined the rest of the soft toy gang but doesn’t hold a special place like ‘bunny’.

I try and rotate them but she won’t have any of it. It’s always tantrums unless the old bunny is with us so I just give in and keep a watchful eye or stuff bunny in nursery bag and pray it doesn’t get lost.

shall I keep persevering and try to rotate, be more firm with taking only the new one, or carry on taking both out?

I am thinking of making an ‘if lost name tag’ and sewing it on. I feel like the money was well wasted on the spare bunny at this point 😩

Oh no! I don’t think there’s any point trying to interchange them any more - like you say, she views them completely separately.

I’d definitely add a tag with all “if lost” details including a mobile number and a full name. And perhaps work on not taking bunny everywhere. Bit by bit. I can’t really advise on that though as we didn’t have this with ours, though I know it’s v normal. We do have plenty of experience of things getting left behind and benefitting from extensive labelling though!

At one point, one of ours went through a phase of literally wanting to sleep on top of the huge heap of cuddly toys for the night, on the floor next to the bed. We said no for ages, bargained, argued, and after a bit decided that was pointless and he could sleep where he liked. He was pleased as punch and settled down for the night once or twice on top of the giant heap. Both nights he got back into bed later on by himself - turns out comfort took actual priority!

If your daughter doesn't like the idea of a label being sewn directly onto Bunny's "skin", you could get a collar with an engraved tag, like a dog?

My son liked to carry a muslin cloth, which was great as we had about a dozen exactly the same, until the day that he had his swapped out with someone else's at nursery. Initially this was awful as his cloth was lost out in the world, but then he decided he preferred the texture of the imposter, so our careful plan of having spares was completely undermined as we ended up with one singular cloth of unknown brand as the lovey....