Rough Waters Ahead

This post will provide updates on three separate things that have occurred over the last week, in chronological order. The first, and most unfortunate, is that I was laid off from my job. This is especially worrisome given that my wife will not be working in a month, and with the medical bills pilling up and all the expenses on the horizon, I'm not sure how we are going to pull it off. But I'm confident that we will. We have been smart with our money and saved as much as we could over the years, and do not have any debt (except for mortgage). Still, I will need to find something soon, and hopefully a job with health insurance.

I had been at my most recent job for six years. I did not tell my co-workers about this pregnancy and its complications, but three weeks ago I informed my boss on a call because I felt like she should know. I informed her that I would be needing to take some time off on Mondays to take my wife to doctor appointments, and would be using a couple weeks of PTO once they arrived given they could be in the hospital for awhile. After this call I was removed from all meetings and my boss stopped responding to my e-mails. I initially thought it could have been that they were trying to decrease my workload given the circumstances, but instead I received a layoff notification from a third party. All it said was that they "have decided to go in a different direction." That's it. I never received a call, and nobody said goodbye. It was one of the most bizarre and, quite frankly, unprofessional things that has ever happened to me. If this was due to financial reasons or the company going in a different research direction--I get it--but at least tell me that. The radio silence, vague wording, and suddenness of it all does have me wondering if I got axed because they thought I might be distracted in the future given the circumstances. But I don't have time to dwell on that now--need to keep moving forward. I applied a few jobs this week and landed one interview. Hopefully something develops soon.

The second thing is that we decided to look at the gender information. Since the twins are mono-di, they are the same gender. But we were holding off on finding out for awhile. But given the other news this past week, my wife wanted to know. Since we had the NIPT blood test done a couple weeks back, they reported on the gender when we got the results. However, we had not looked at it until this past weekend. And...they are girls! My wife is very excited. I didn't have a preference and would have been happy regardless, but she really wanted girls so I am happy for her. My mom is also thrilled, as she grew up with three brothers, had three sons, and her two grandkids so far are both boys.

The third thing is that we received the ultrasound photos from the week 13 scan that we got from the specialist (the second opinion). I have uploaded those below for reference. Our next ultrasound is next Thursday morning, so I am excited to see how much they have developed over the past month--as I imagine it will look much different.

 Life is a constant stream of ups and downs. We had some really low downs when we had the 12 week scan, but then a big up when we had the week 13 scan and NIPT test results, then a down when I lost my job, and an up when we found out they are girls. Just going to continue this ride and see where life takes us. Luckily I have a 50k race tomorrow morning--I could use the distraction.

Baby A at 13 weeks

Baby B at 13 weeks

3D image of baby A at 13 weeks