The unexpected 2WW

Thanks for all the good vibes for the results of the amnio. However, some people had suggested to me that only waiting a week for the results seemed like a short amount of time.

Indeed, it is. One of the doctors in the room told me that we could expect an early result in one day and the definitive result in a week. Noooo.......not really. After about a week (this past Tuesday) I called the office and asked about my results. The nice nurse on the phone told me that she did have the early test results, but the final results would take, yes, at least two weeks. So that doctor was obviously not a research scientist; I am, however, and I feel that I should have figured something was up. Nevermind that I work with yeast and not humans....

Anywho, the results of the early test were very encouraging. Both babies have the normal # of chromosomes at first glance (yay for 46 chromosomes). [Just to show you how non-human-centric I am: I had to look that up. at first I was going to write 16 (# of chromsomes in budding yeast) and my next guess was 3 (number of chromosomes in fission yeast) and worse than that, these numbers are for hapliod yeast--double sigh.] Next week we should get the final results on the actual human babies I am carrying and not on what I stare at every day.

In other mind-blowing news, my mind is blown. I swear I can actually FEEL my brain cells withering up and dying. Sometimes getting an intellegent sentence out of my mouth is more effort than it is worth. I am considering communicating strictly through grunting now.

This comes at a bad time, as I have quite a lot on my plate work-wise. It seems that this miracle of a pregnancy will come to an end (I hope) right about at the time that my fellowship runs out at work. This fellowship I have pays for my salary (and my health insurance). I am very fortunate to have it. But when it ends, there is no guarantee of a job. The funding in my lab is quite tight right now, and I have had to have a few uncomfortable conversations with my boss. The conversations go along the line of : " Um, yeah, so my fellowship will be running out at the end of August. I was wondering if you were in a position to keep me on for a while afterwards." Well, I guess that is just my side of the conversation. The answer from my boss is that he just doesn't know right now. We may have a better idea in mid-March when we will meet with a funding agency to see if they think we have made enough progress on our current reasearch to apply for a larger grant which can fund a salary.

To be honest, it is time for me to move on in my career. My post-doc (what you do after grad school when there are no jobs available) will be at the 4 year mark in August (rather typical for a life science post-doc). However, now is not the best time to be searching for a job, what with my scattered brain and this lovey economy. This morning at breakfast, hubby and I had a talk about different options if I cannot stay in my current lab after the babies are born. He brought up getting a job in a bank or mall. I was pretty fabbergasted, I have to say. Not that I have a problem with the work; I've just spent, um, the last 18 (OHMYGOSH) years of my life persuing a career as a research scientist (college + lab tech + grad school +post doc). Well, we'll just have to see what happens in the next few weeks/months....