Loving Parents and Babies Both

A matching set of kimonos for 20-week
infants. The outfits are about 6.5" tall, or a
little shorter than an adult's hand.

Since 2011, an organization called Teeny Tears has existed specifically to provide clothing for infants too small for infant and preemie clothing available in stores. Thus far, over 130,000 tiny handmade diapers have been donated by volunteers and over 1,000 hospitals have been served. The mission is to share hope and encouragement for those suffering infant bereavement.
About 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage (loss of the baby before the 20th week), and of those, 75% end within the first trimester. 1% of pregnancies end in stillbirth (infant loss after 20 weeks). That means that there are countless women who have undergone infant loss, and most of them are suffering in silence. This is particularly true for the mothers of the children lost in the first trimester, who often feel as if they are not allowed to grieve.
Talking about death is always uncomfortable, and the fact that miscarriage often occurs when a child is considered “not viable” (unable to survive outside of a mother’s womb) means that many people feel like no one will understand their grief. After all, a common response to an infant death is something along the lines of, “There was probably something wrong with it,” or “It’s probably for the best.”
As anyone knows who has dealt with grief, responses like this do not help; rather they make the grieving person feel invalidated—but grief doesn’t work like that. No matter how tiny, frail, and helpless an infant is, even when he is the size of a pea or a baby carrot, families who have lost children still feel grief. That infant, no matter how small, is a part of the family.
Many women who volunteer for Teeny Tears have personal stories either of leaving brokenhearted with nothing or of leaving with some comfort with pictures, footprints and tiny diapers. The women all remember their experiences vividly, either with grief and regret when they were given nothing or with gratitude and even joy with those who experienced compassion and understanding from hospital staff and volunteers.
I have personally been involved in this and other related organizations for some years, and my specialty is knitting kimonos for infants between the ages of 16-22 weeks’ gestation (around 4-5 months). There are no clothes or diapers that can fit these tiny angels who can fit in the palm of a hand.

A pair of outfits for boys between
20-22 weeks' gestation.

The unconditional love expressed by those involved in organizations such as Teeny Tears, though, is sharply contrasted with the apathy and even cruelty of organizations such as Planned Parenthood. Instead of cherishing and nourishing an infant’s life and celebrating each day, abortion clinics fuel fear, worry, and self-interest. Parents feel that they can’t bear the burdens, that this isn’t the right time, that it would be best for the child not to live. And so fragile infants are poisoned, dismembered and crushed in the name of love and parenthood.
The nation has been shocked in the past week by the release of two videos. Each video has been released twice: once in a full unedited version and once in a much shorter edited version. Both Dr. Deborah Nucatola and Dr. Mary Gatter are Planned Parenthood clinic directors and abortion doctors, and they were filmed by undercover operatives discussing the sale of aborted fetal organs for profit.
I have been absolutely appalled by the most recent developments with Planned Parenthood, but it really should come as no surprise. After all, when a life is devalued-- but the cost of its parts go up, even the most innocent and helpless life is threatened. Death is not more merciful than life, no matter how hard that life is.
That is why organizations like Teeny Tears exist. They seek to cherish life and to comfort families, leaving them with more than empty hands when they leave the hospital. Teeny Tears is also founded in hope—hope that all infants will know they are loved and may meet their families, and also hope that they will live. They leave families with some measure of joy and remembrance and peace, even in the midst of their heartbreak and grief.

Several kimonos for girls, a blanket, and several diaper sets. Diapers are donated in matching sets so that parents may
keep one and dress their baby in the other in the case of bereavement.

Book Review: "Shadows" by Robin McKinley

Shadows by Robin McKinley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Rated PG-13.

Well, that was confusing.

But not as confusing as Franz Kafka (whose short story The Metamorphosis I read earlier this evening as well).

And kudos to the math book and origami. Those were the best things ever. I love origami, although I am not very good at it. Algebra is also pretty good (although I understand why some people hate it), and the thing with the shadows was inspired. Spot-on fabulous!

All the same, this is, sadly, not one of McKinley's best. I love parts of it, and I was absolutely enthralled with some of the worldbuilding...but only the magical part. I was not at all happy about the proliferation of ridiculous lingo, some of which has...bad connotations in real life. I know McKinley is aware that the term "f-word" has a distinctly nasty connotation in English, so using that term to mean something along the lines of "foretelling" should be a no-no. Her editor should have vetoed that. McKinley should have vetoed that--because it has no place in this novel. None whatsoever.

Lingo rant aside...actually, never mind. I need to rant about the lingo some more.

Just for the record, I hate books like Feed, which rely almost exclusively on profanity and made-up terminology, especially for worldbuilding. Granted, I may be being slightly unfair there...but I still feel that too much linguistic modification detracts from rather than enhances a story. As far as I'm concerned, one hallmark of good writing is usually that the words disappear to make room for the story. When the words take center stage, the world vanishes to make room for the words. Sometimes this can be okay to create setting, but, on the whole, new lingo should be used very sparingly indeed. I love long, complicated words as much as any other linguaphile, but they have a time and a place, and such words are created for specific purposes. Words such as "bugsucking" and "dreeping" and the like are just distracting.

And by using so much new terminology, Robin McKinley seems to me to be regressing. It makes me so sad! So very, very sad! I love, love, LOVE The Blue Sword. It is my #1 top read book. There are some made-up words like kelar and dalgut and things like that, but they are very fitting. They are subtly inserted. They make sense and they enhance the story.

On the other hand, words like bugsucking don't enhance anything. I really hate having to figure out an array of new expletives. If you're going to make up words, make them worthwhile. Please. PLEASE.

Also, if you insist upon creating a huge list of new words specifically for a single novel, please have the decency to add regular footnotes or at least a glossary. Or explain them more than once, because if you use the term "f-word" repeatedly but only explain it once, guess what your audience is going to think every time you use that word without explanation? Yes. It practically takes mental gymnastics to follow that particular train of thought. That said, that was the general idea that McKinley was getting at, but I knew it meant something else and I really, really wanted to remember what it meant in the story, but I read it SO MANY TIMES before I remembered the meaning!

Dear writers, your job is to make it feasible for your readers to follow your story [fairly] easily. At the very least, don't make the language so complex that it's difficult to figure out what the story is. And if the story itself is complex--no. Just--please. Have mercy on your readers.

Because if you elect to obfuscate certain aspects of the work of art to which you have presumably contributed and perchance are assumed to have created for the purpose of appreciation and enjoyment, then you may experience some confusion and disappointment as a result of your deliberate density.

Also, this book felt way too much like a typical teenage novel. It just kills me. My favorite books by McKinley are The Blue Sword and Beauty, and I used to like The Outlaws of Sherwood a lot, too. I also really like Chalice, for some reason. None of those books are really the stereotypical teenage fare, but somehow, this one felt like that. Let me count the ways:

1. Whiney teenage girl as narrator
2. Love triangle (um, sort of. That doesn't really get cleared up all that well). Also, this love triangle involves a hot werewolf and a hot white magician from another country. Meet Jacob and Edward, except Jacob wins in this universe.
3. "Evil" stepdad (not really, but that's the first impression)
4. Werewolves

Well, there aren't 25 sin counts, necessarily, but four is still far too many, because these are big ones. Come on, McKinley! You can do better than Twilight! (Can't you?)

Finally, I need to mention one more thing. I don't like the foggy writing technique very much. Robin McKinley does it really well, I will admit, but I prefer the clear writing technique. What is foggy writing, you ask? Foggy writing is when you have entire sections in which everything is described in such a way as to obfuscate stuff. So when the main character repeatedly sees sparkles and then shadows and patches of nothingness, and then she folds worlds so that "up is down and down is nothing," that is disorienting. Perhaps purposefully disorienting, but disorienting. So I guess that that is good writing--to make the readers feel like the main characters are feeling--but if you don't like that sort of thing, most of Robin McKinley's books aren't for you. I include in that list Sunshine, Deerskin, Dragonhaven, and Spindle's End.

And is this or is this not supposed to have a sequel? Because I sincerely hope it won't. That said, McKinley has, for some unknown reason, ceased to create definite singletons and has started writing first books of series which never come to fruition.

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