This week sure has been interesting so far! This is my last week at work and so every morning my husband says to me, “Today is your last Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday of 2017!” This really is kind of insane as I have had a job of some kind since I was 15. The longest gap in employment was about six weeks when I first came to hubby’s country.
Where I live now maternity leave is paid at 70% of your salary for 4 months. This seems incredibly short compared to the likes of Scandinavian and ex-Communist countries which have maternity leave requirements sometimes up to 2 years in duration! In any case, my plan is to take additional holiday and unpaid parental leave so that I am home with baby for at least six months. Then I’ll see what I want to do after that.
With this in mind and because my role at work is senior, my employer has decided to recruit maternity cover for me. For the past three weeks I have been spending hours and hours with my replacement explaining in great detail everything about the main client she will be working on. I’ve been coaching her through all of the information, even though she is older and has more experience than me. She was doing well and sounding really enthusiastic, even messaging me out of hours to tell me how great everything was.
So you can imagine my surprise when she just didn’t turn up to work yesterday and then it transpired that she had contacted the Director of the company where I work and made it clear she no longer wants to work with us. I don’t want to risk getting myself into any legal trouble, but let’s just say the way she went about this was quite spectacular, highly accusatory and she will not be on my Christmas cards list this year.
I thought I was a decent judge of people, but then stuff like this happens and I’m totally taken by surprise. So now I have two days of work left and no replacement. Everything will be fine in the long run I’m sure, but unfortunately whoever takes over from me won’t get any in-person handover now.
The whole drama surrounding this – and there was a lot of drama that I am not able to mention here – was exhausting yesterday. I went for drinks with a few colleagues after work last night (they had wine, I had lemonade) and I think if I’d not been pregnant I would have had a wild night. Instead I came home at 7.30pm and was so exhausted I just lay on the sofa until my husband came home. Even then I was not capable of making dinner or being of any use at all.
Today I am better but I’m drained from everything that happened yesterday. I’m also now busily trying to get as many big things for work ticked off the list so that those left behind to look after my work have less to do, at least for the next couple of weeks. I have not even had enough energy to look at what things I should be packing for the hospital!
Today we had a check-up with our doctor and there was absolutely no drama about that – the baby is doing brilliantly! He’s about 2.7kg (almost 6 pounds) which is pretty average for 36 weeks, which we will be on Friday. We saw all the important stuff – brain, stomach, legs and… errr… testicles! Yes, hubby made a request for the doctor to show us his willy and balls. So the doctor (male) made a special effort to take a “between the legs” photo. I am not kidding when I say I now have a photo of my unborn child’s testicles and penis. It’s funny, but truly men never grow up!! (I’m not posting it here, or anywhere!)
We got a semi-decent 3D shot of the baby’s face. He looks NOTHING like me and everything like his dad in this shot. At another time we could see he has a full head of hair too. As a baby, I was bald for practically the first year. This baby is definitely not taking after his mother! As I said to my mum, at least we know they didn’t mess up the sperm samples when they were doing the IVF! (Does anyone else have that nightmare that how do you know they actually transferred the correct embryo?!)
He has his hand or something in front of half of his face.
Baby is not at all engaged in the pelvis. He is having way too much fun doing laps and cartwheels in my uterus. The doctor said he’d see us once more in about 10 days time for another scan and then after that the next time he will see us will be for The Big Day.
As I’m a scheduled c-section patient I have also been able to reserve which suite I want to stay in so I have chosen the biggest one. Hahaha! There have to be some advantages to being sliced open, right?
I am starting to get excited now as it’s getting closer and closer to his arrival. I am also starting to worry about taking care of a small human. I have lots of experience taking care of small cats, but I’m wondering how much of that will be transferrable skills?! Maybe the cats will be the best guardians ever. I sure hope so!