The Marshall Family Season of Service: Dear Heidi,

Our Season of Service

Inspired by some friends of our family, the Marshall family has decided to try a new way of exchanging Christmas gifts in 2012. We hope it will become a wonderful family tradition.
For years, the four Marshall children, their spouses, and their parents exchanged gifts every Christmas, but in 2011, we decided the gift-giving tradition may need a change since we are all so blessed and in need of truly nothing. We decided we needed to find a better way to celebrate the true Christmas spirit.

We suggested that we each perform acts of service in the name of the sibling whose name we were assigned at random. Our service will be kept a secret until Christmas Day.

Our friend drew the names for us and notified each of us privately of the person who should inspire our service. On Christmas Day, we reveal who we were given and how we chose to serve by posting our stories on The Marshall Family Season of Service blog.

We hope this tradition will help us focus on serving our communities and each other during the annual celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We invite you to come back to our blog on Christmas morning to read this year's service.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Dear Heidi,

When I found out I got to do service in your name this year, I knew I wanted to do something crafty since we both share a love for that.

A few years ago I heard about an organization named Teeny Tears. Teeny Tears is a service organization that donates tiny diapers to hospitals, birth centers and other bereavement support groups. The diapers are given to families who have suffered the loss of a preemie or micropreemie child through stillbirth or NICU loss. They rely on volunteers to help make the diapers. With the help of various group and individual volunteers, including church groups and Eagle Scout projects, in just the three years since the project has launched, over 110,300 diapers have been made and donated to over 900 hospitals internationally.

According to their website,

Approximately 26,000 children are stillborn in the United States every year, about 1 in 160 births. A significant number of these angels are preemie or micropreemie infants. Many of these angels are far too small for even the very smallest commercial diapers.

And these diapers are truly tiny.

The small diapers are intended for use on babies around 16-24 weeks. They are about 2 inches tall and 2.5 inches wide. The "large" diapers fit babies from 24-32 weeks. They are about 3 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall. It is pretty heartbreaking to imagine a baby that small but I know these diapers may at least lighten the load of grief for the families who face this outcome.

Each family receives a matching set of diapers so they can have one as a keepsake. When I started, I had a goal of at least 100 diapers and I hit that and just kept going. Altogether I made 128 diapers, making 64 sets.