with love from your mother

I remember this about the day Jeff was born:

April 6th, 1968
My due date with Jeff was April 11th. Of course, my mother was hoping that I would wait and have her first grand child on her birthday, April 12th.
We had gone to the late movie the night of April 5th and had seen "Wait Until Dark." It had one part that scared the heck out of me. (Maybe it scared the baby out of me, too!) Anyway, a few hours later the contractions started. I woke up about three or four in the morning. I was very excited but I wasn’t sure if the pains were for real or not - they were not very bad and were not very close together.
By mid-morning, we were pretty sure that we were going to have a baby that day. I had an incredible burst of energy. I did the laundry, ironed all of Richard’s shirts and cleaned the whole house. Richard was watching General Conference on television and was keeping track of the time between contractions.
I thought I would feel embarrassed if I went to the hospital too soon. I was sure they would laugh and send me home until I was really ready. But about 7 p.m., after some urging from my mother and cussing from my dad, we decided we better get to the hospital.
Richard and I played a scrambled letter word game in the labor room for quite a while.
When I couldn’t figure out the word ‘labor’ from the letters b-l-o-a-r, Richard knew that I no longer had my mind in the game.
The nurse kept telling me that I was doing fine and that pretty soon they could give me something for pain. About 20 minutes after receiving the first pain medication, I said to the nurse: "You told me that the medication would start working in about 10 minutes and it has been 20 minutes and I still feel the pain." The nurse said to me in her most condescending voice: "Oh, sweetie, the medication doesn’t do anything to stop the pain, it will just help you relax between the pains." I wanted to slap her! About that time, Richard said, " Do you still think you would like to have eight children?" I remember I gave him a dirty look and held up one finger. (No, it wasn’t the middle finger, it was the first finger, - indicating that I thought one child would be plenty, thank you!)
Jeff was born at 9:10 p.m. Our doctor, Rymal Williams, said that Jeff was the most perfect baby he had ever seen or delivered. The nurse who took care of him called him ‘little Neal’ because she thought he looked like his Grandpa, S Neal Carter. We had decided early in the pregnancy that if the baby was a boy, he would be named Jeffrey Don Grimshaw. Jeffrey Butler was Richard’s favorite missionary companion and Don Rasmussen was Richard’s favorite mission president.
I was overcome with feelings of love and a little frightened at the responsibility of caring for such a precious little baby. You were a delightful little boy, a challenging teenager, and are now a conscientious and caring adult, but all along you have been a wonderful son. We love and appreciate you very much and are very proud of you, your family, and your accomplishments.
Richard would like to report that what he remembers most about the day Jeff was born was running out of gas on the way home from the hospital late that night and being picked up by some friends of ours who had been drinking and were dragging Main Street. He is still amazed that we could spend so much time preparing a nursery (which was really not used), buying diapers, clothes, etc. and were too dumb to keep enough gas in the car to get to the hospital and back. Lucky for all of us that Jeff wasn’t born at the Dairy Freeze!
Happy 40th Birthday, Jeff!