Tiny children, lost at sea...

Well, they buried my infant niece last week. She was 3 pounds, 10 oz, and had multiple, fatal birth defects. Everyone knew it was coming because she had Trisomy 18, a non-hereditary chromosomal disorder. They didn't expect her cleft palate to be quite as bad as it was, so there are no pictures of her.

This is the dress I made for her to be buried in. My poor mom made two, successively smaller dresses, but they were still much too large. I know preemies. I had to show you the little tiny dress that I made for her.




The dress was a labor of love for my brother. It was all I could do for him, and it was a work of art. The slip is cotton lawn. The dress is eyelet with a lawn-lined eyelet collar. The bonnet is eyelet, lined in lawn. (You missed the hand work inside the bonnet!) I pulled an all-nighter to get this in the mail on time.

Maybe it's my ruthlessly practical nature, but I'm not really that broken up now. We've known for months that this child was a short-term loan from her creator.

My father is a little freaked out that my mother and I are so light handed in our response to this. Had my mother been in that position, truth be told, would have had an abortion when she found out that the child would die at birth. She would not put herself and the entire family in a high-stress condition for an entire year for a fetus that badly damaged. I know it sounds heartless, but life is that way. My sister-in-law put this family through the wringer, put her toddler in a precarious emotional position, and dragged everyone she knew along for this seemingly quixotic, narcissistic, self-destructive journey. I just don't understand, I suppose. I may never understand.