Poppy was born on 21/08/2021 at 11:05pm at heartlands hospital in Birmingham, she weighed 6lb 15oz. 

growing up she developed a love for music especially Harry styles, and Lizzo, her favourite film was Encanto which she would watch multiple times a day, she also loved The Clangers, Mickey mouse club house, Yakka Dee, Thomas the Tank engine and Pepper pig. She loved her food and bottle and her favourite snacks where mini cheddars, quavers, chocolate buttons and especially Skips. She loved to go out in the Car for rides so she could nose out the window. Her absolute favourite place to be was on her dads shoulder to be walked around most of the day so she could watch everyone and everything and if he dared to stop walking to look at something or chat to someone she would kick him as if to say giddy up daddy lets go. And she never went anywhere without her pink blanky that her nanny made her, she had a particular corner that she would rub on her nose to soothe herself. She also loved her dummies and had a whole jar full of them, she would get so excited when she saw the jar and she would choose one for herself. 

At about 10 months old Poppy started to become unwell, she would start to cough when drinking her bottles and vomit most of it back up, she lost her appetite for her food except for the skips, she started to loose weight and sleep all day, she was no longer wanting to play she would just sit and watch or sleep. 

She was taken to the doctors multiple times a week for a few months and a few times to the hospital, they would say she had a bacterial chest infection, a sore throat. She was constantly given antibiotics or steroids and even an inhaler. But she never seemed to get any better just got worse. 

On her first birthday we had a cake smash for her, even though she was poorly she still managed to give us plenty of smiles and she enjoyed eating a little bit of the icing. just a few weeks after her 1st birthday we noticed a lump on he side of Poppy's neck when we took her to the doctor he explained its just the lymph node filling with fluid due to a bacterial infection and to carry on with antibiotics over the course of the week the lump grew rapidly we went back to the doctor a few times and every time we had been told its nothing to worry about and it will go down on its own. But it didn't it just got bigger and bigger we then took her to another doctor who sent us to hospital for scans.

After all the scans it was obvious Poppy had a malignant tumor of some kind and needed to start treatment. At Birmingham Childrens Hospital she was booked in to have surgery to have a biopsy of the lump in her neck and to take bone marrow samples and to also put in her central lines that would be used to give her Chemotherapy, during this surgery to insert the central line the surgeon accidentally punctured her heart turning a simple surgery into emergency life saving open heart surgery. Poppy pulled through the surgery at was soon on the road to recovery, and within days she was back on her feet and playing.

We were given Poppy's diagnosis a couple days after the surgery and told it was Malignant Rhabdoid Tumor an extremely rare aggressive cancer, we were told they couldn't cure it but they hoped to shrink it and give Poppy more time. 

Poppy's chemotherapy started in October at this point the tumour was sticking out of her neck the size of a large egg and on the inside it had wrapped around her nerves and arteries, it had caused a blood clot in the main carotid artery and paralyzed her left vocal cord. Poppy could swallow liquids anymore she needed an NG tube. It had also caused something called Horner's syndrome so her left eye had started to droop and the pupil appeared smaller than the right. Poppy carried on through treatment and was doing well, she became playful again and happy. it didn't take long for poppy's hair to start falling out so we shaved it all off.

everything was going well until early December when poppy became very sick again constantly vomiting up her NG tube and loosing weight again, she had developed mucositis after a few weeks in hospital she was sent home for Christmas but after been home just a few days poppy wasn't getting better and continued to sick up her NG tube. And on Christmas day it was so bad we had to go back into hospital leaving all her Christmas presents untouched and still wrapped under the tree. 

Poppy was put on TPN ( nutrition through central lines) and a plan was in place to have a gastrostomy fitted. They did an MRI on Poppy on the 29th December to see how the tumour was doing, and the results showed it had shrunk significantly and was still localised with no sign of disease anywhere, they where so pleased with the results and said they would look to start her on radiotherapy in a couple months. Poppy had to stay in hospital until she could have the gastrostomy because she could only receive nutrition through her central lines until then surgery was booked for January 18th. She had the surgery and came back with a lot of bleeding that took hours to control and the surgeons had to come to her twice but Poppy was very relaxed and just took it.

Just a few days after her surgery poppy started to become irritable, she couldn't settle down to sleep and she kept grinding her teeth so much that she would make her mouth bleed, the doctors didn't seem concerned to start with but then on the sunday evening of the 23rd January we noticed Poppy's eyes had crossed and she didn't seem to be able to focus on us properly, that night she didn't sleep and the teeth grinding worsened. On the Monday she had two CT scans which unfortunately showed the cancer had began to spread over her brain causing the ventricles to swell and cause pressure. We were told that there was no longer anything that could be done to treat poppy's cancer that now it was just about making her comfortable and that she was going to die in a matter of days.

We made the choice to go to Acorns Childrens Hospice. the hospice was like a home from home and we where looked after so well, we could fully focus on our last days with poppy, we did memory making and took her in the hydro pool, we had all our families and friends come and visit poppy.

Poppy passed away on the Sunday 29th at 1:29am with both her mommy and daddy by her side.