End of an Era

I have left my old job and started a new one. I was quite emotional as I walked out if my building for the final time the Thursday before Labor Day. It was in the three plus years I spent there when nearly all if my family-building journey (thus far) occurred.

In my first office on the second floor I worked very late one evening so I could leave the following morning on a trip to California. On that flight, I realized I was pregnant. Suddenly, my extreme tiredness and the way I was so aware of the smell of the old files made sense. The smell if that paper makes me think of Blue Sunday still. 

A few weeks later, in the second floor bathroom I came out if the second stall and slipped down the two steps that someone Foolishly put there (it is a pre-civil war building.. So who knows why). I panicked and ended up with serial betas.. Which were wonky. 

Same bathroom different stall was the week 10 spotting incident. From my office I called the doc crying and earned my first peek at Blue Sunday. 

Office move. I kept a post-it under my keyboard with important pregnancy dates. I threw it away the one day I was in between receiving odds and diagnosis. I knew. I spent one full morning googling T18 odds and ultrasound findings. Went to the bathroom on the third floor, second stall and got the call "I'm sorry, this is a T18 baby". Never went into that stall again. 

Office move again a few months later- much to my relief. Upstairs, new start and new drama. IF starts to make itself known. While I was upstairs, the third floor office I was in for the diagnosis is turned into the "war room" prepping a study for final analysis. Fittingly, drug fails. Deep down, I blame the karma of that room (it's now storage- full of baggage literally and figuratively). One month after the drug fails, I'm pregnant. 

Positive beta is relayed to me on the phone I answered while stepping out of our big conference room- located on the second floor. I took that call 5 feet away from the entrance to my first office. The office where I felt hopeful and happy with Blue Sunday. 

Outside of our other conference room, this one on the fourth floor, I took another call I had to leave a meeting for. This one told me Take Two (kins) was chromosomally normal. I walked back into that meeting a different person. 

10 months later I walked back into that office- a real mother with a three month old at home. 

It isn't hyperbole to say some of my very best and worst moments happened in that building and with that company. There were professional highs and lows there as well- some of my best friends and most important colleagues I met there- but it is the personal that really left it's mark. 

I hope my next company is far less dramatic for my personal life!

I'm closing one door, opening another- but that place and it's memories won't be far from my thoughts.