April 2004 Update - The Heartbeat
Can you believe it’s been another month already? I can’t. There’s actually a lot to cover in this update, so I’ll get started. I am now 13 weeks along, 1/3 of the way through this pregnancy. EEK! I haven’t done nearly enough to prepare for the baby so far. No shopping, no baby registration, but everyone assures me that my “nesting instinct” will kick in soon. Oh, we did pick a nursery theme though. Ready? It’s “Sleepytime Snoopy.” Photos are attached. It’s mostly blue (a more classic “Crayola blue” than the pictures indicate) and yellow. We’ve already bought the basic set, and there aren’t a bunch of other pieces in the set that I want, so anything “sun, moon, stars” should coordinate just fine. It doesn’t even have to be Snoopy. So to anyone anxious to do some shopping, anything blue and yellow should be just fine. I should be registering soon at various stores, and I will include the locations in next month’s update. I should also have a baby webpage (or two) up and running by then.
My prenatal appointment on Monday was very short and mostly uneventful. I was supposed to get to hear the heartbeat this time, so I was really looking forward to it. I get back to the room, she pulls out the little handheld unit, and we get nothing. Fiddle around with it, add a little more gel, still nothing. We could hear *something,* just not the fluttery sound we were expecting. There was no one in ultrasound, so she took me down there to have a look. Naturally, I was nervous. Many of my symptoms have dissipated in the last couple of weeks (which I attributed to the end of the first trimester), and I had been having some mild lower abdominal pain (which I thought was the uterus rising out of the pelvis), so add in not finding a heartbeat, and I feared the worst. She puts the probe on me and starts hunting. “Well, no wonder we couldn’t get a heartbeat!” I can hear the smile in her voice. “The baby just won’t hold still long enough.” Sure enough, all I could see on the monitor was wiggling. We caught a glimpse of the heart every now and then, but we couldn’t get it to come through much on the microphone, and with so much wiggling, visible heart flutters were hard to catch as well. “Generally, when they’re moving that much, they have a heart, and I know you saw it last time, so there’s no reason to worry.” My blood pressure was 120/80, my weight is right on target (not too much, not too little). “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Yes ma’am.
So, that covers the good news. Now for the bad news, though it is about me, not the baby. Many of you knew that we were expecting a “major and devastating” downsizing at work. Well, it was last Tuesday (March 30), and it was everything they promised. 20 of 42 people in my district were cut, including me. Actually, someone I don’t know way higher than me in upper management decided that anyone in my “job class” was cut, regardless of how much money we make or how many years of service we had. No one said “we’re going to cut Erin,” no one said that it was more important to keep someone else than me, the decision was not made by someone who knows me, and no one was happy about it, including my manager, my district manager, and my division manager. My division manager assured me personally that the decision had nothing to do with my job performance, and he wished he could find some place to “put me” so that I could stay. He also said that whenever I’m ready for a recommendation or reference letter when I start job hunting, I should contact him directly. So, as bad as it was, it was comforting to hear (from someone in a position to know) that it really had nothing to do with *me* or how I do my job.
I’ll be “off payroll” at the end of May, and I’ll get 10 weeks of severance pay on top of that. We’ve run our financial numbers, and we will be just fine in that department. No more big trips (without lots of saving and planning), no more buying what we want whenever we want (but that would have stopped with the baby anyway), but we’ll have more than enough to pay bills, eat, and buy diapers, even if I don’t work. Might even be able to afford to catch a movie or two this summer. :p I have also been covered under Steve’s medical insurance ever since he started working almost 6 years ago (are we really that old?!). We never dropped the coverage, even after I started working. Knowing this was a possibility, we intentionally started my prenatal coverage under *his* policy, so I wouldn’t have to change later (just in case). I’d say that’s one of the smartest decisions we ever made. So don’t worry a bit about our finances or healthcare. All three of us will be just fine.
Well, I’ve written quite a novel here, but there is lots going on, and I thought you’d like to know. Look for your next update in early May! We’ll be having “the ultrasound” done, but we’re still planning *not* to find out the gender, so don’t get your hopes up. They'll just be making sure that everything is developing properly. I should have some new pictures to share, though. Thank you all for your love and support. It means so much to us.
Love, Erin and Steve and Baby Gaston
