Birthday Girl

My firstborn has reached her final year of teenhood! (*sigh*) Yesterday, October 27, was her 19th birthday. Where do the years go?

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To celebrate, we had our traditional Mexican dinner at El Rancho, where the staff sang to her, took her picture in a sombrero, and gave her a free dish of deep-fried ice cream. Then at home we enjoyed chocolate cake and mint-n-chip ice cream.

Sarah is very into the Twilight book series, and I planned to buy a Twilight poster of Edward and Bella as her gift, but they're all sold out. Eventually she'll get her poster, but for now she chose a DVD, The Game Plan. We'll continue her birthday "celebration" next week by going to see High School Musical 3 at the theater, another of her passions.
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In honor of Sarah's birthday, I thought I'd reminisce a little about her first year of life. She helped me choose some of our favorite old pictures for this blog.

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These pictures were taken on Christmas morning when Sarah was not quite yet 2 months old.

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Sarah Jane was born October 27, 1989 in Mesa, AZ. She was delivered 3 weeks early because her mom had a premonition that something was wrong, and thankfully Dr. Mechelke paid attention to my funny feelings.

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While labor was induced, Sarah's heartrate plummeted and suddenly we were prepping for an emergency c-section (the first of 3 for me). Sarah was born with a temperature of 104.2 and doctors scrambled to figure out why. She had a spinal tap at less than one hour old. It turned out she had E. coli in her blood--they never discovered why--and they weren't sure she'd survive the first night. Maybe it was the morphine they injected into my epidural, but I felt comforted that she would make it. However, she would have been stillborn if we had waited even one day more.


Sarah spent her first 7 days in the hospital with a tiny I.V. of antibiotics in her little foot. She wasn't allowed to eat for 3 days and I couldn't hold her or take her out of the nursery for 4 days, which happened to fall on Halloween!

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I spent 6 days in the hospital myself because my c-section scar got infected. I didn't mind since I didn't want to go home without my baby girl. We lived in a 1-bedroom apartment across the street from Mesa General Hospital, so at least I wasn't too far away when I had to go home one day before Sarah.
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The photo above was taken on May 10, 1990, when Sarah was 6 months old. She was there for my graduation from ASU! The one at right was taken about 2 weeks later.
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To me, finally becoming a mother at the age of 35 was magical, better than Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny put together! That feeling has never gone away. My children make every hardship worthwhile, and it all started with my sweet Sarah.

Everything was so much more fun, the world was so much brighter with Sarah around. This picture was taken the day we left Mesa and moved into our new apartment here in the White Mountains. It was July 29 and Sarah was 9 months old.

This is Halloween 1990. Sarah had turned 1 year old just 4 days earlier. It was exactly one year from the day I was first allowed to hold my new daughter, when we knew she really was going to be all right.

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The picture below is one of my favorites, taken Thanksgiving Day, November 22. My parents had moved to Murray, Utah, and we drove up to spend the holiday with them.
While there, Sarah (almost 13 months old) took her first steps, walking to her Grandpa Butler (my dad), whom she hadn't seen for almost 6 months.
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It was also her last time to see her Great Grandma Haley (my mom's mother), who was 84 years old at the time. Grandma returned to live in California for a few years before passing away. We never saw her again in this life. I'm so grateful that families are forever!
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I loved the sweet moment the two of them shared while waiting for the feast to begin.
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Happy Birthday to my Angel Sarah!
I'm so glad you chose to be a part of my life!
Love, Mom