I'll always remember

the beautiful image we saw as we were driving from
Springville to Provo 32 years ago today.

I had worked on the 29th, a Sunday afternoon, in the Emergency Room at Utah Valley Hospital. I was an intake clerk there and usually worked on weekends when Gary could watch Misty. After I got off work at 9 pm I stopped in to say hello to Mom and Dad and then went to our home on Swenson Avenue in Springville. I awoke at 1 am on Memorial day, May 30, when my water broke and contractions started. This was quite a surprise. Misty had been two weeks late, so I was fully anticipating the same with this baby. Instead, she was two weeks early. When we called the hospital they told us to come right in.

As we drove from Springville to Provo, we passed the Provo Cemetery. I'll always remember the sight of hundreds of waving flags lined up to honor the veterans buried there. It was lit up just enough to give it an almost surreal feeling. I wish I had a picture of it. The year they discontinued having all the flags lined up, I did take a picture of Tiffany standing in front of them. (Do you have that, Tiff? I can't find it. Further proof that I need to digitize my negatives!)

We drove up to Cedar Avenue, dropped Misty off at Mom and Dad's, and got to Utah Valley Hospital at about 2 am. Everything happened very quickly from that point on, and our second daughter, Tiffany, was born at about 3:30 am. Because she was two weeks early and the labor went so quickly, I remember thinking that I wanted everything to slow down a little, that I wasn't ready yet.

As it turns out, it was a blessing she was so early. After the first day she was very jaundiced and was not responding to any treatments. Finally, they started doing blood tests, and that is when they found out that my blood had been typed wrong when I had it tested for my pregnancy with Misty. My blood type was not A positive, but rather A negative. Because I was shown as positive, I was not given the RhoGam shot when Misty was born. The RhoGam shot is given to a woman with negative blood after she has given birth to a positive baby. It stops the mother from developing her own antibodies that will then attack the blood cells of the next positive child.

That explained why Tiffany was not responding to any of the treatments. Her blood was positive, and my negative blood had built up antibodies against the positive factor in her blood. This meant the antibodies were breaking up her blood so quickly that her kidneys could not process it. That is a very layman's terms explanation, but it is really the only one I know.

They quickly gave Tiffany a blood transfusion, and then she responded to the treatments immediately. I have always felt so grateful that they found the problem soon enough. Otherwise, she could have had brain damage or even died. Then there would be no son-in-law, Justin, and no grandchildren, Eliza, Ashton, Annie, or Lucienne. That would be sad, indeed.

Here she is our beautiful daughter
at 6 weeks

Now, 32 years later, Tiffany is the mother of four cherished children and the wife of a wonderful man. I'm very proud of her and the woman she has become.

There was a time when she was about five that we wondered a little about what she would be like when she grew older. At a family reunion she entertained the whole group with a rather intense Michael Jackson rendition of dancing. One of my cousins commented, "I'd like to see that girl when she's 16." Fortunately, she never lived up to that!

We love you

Tiffany!