I'm sure you're asking what's been going on in my life for the last three months! Besides the birth of the boys and the inevitable sleep deprivation, feeding, diapering, bathing, and general baby juggling, quite a lot has been going on! Since this blog is a documentation of my financial journey I'll try to stick with the financially related items but you'll have to forgive my frazzled mommy brain if I go off on tangents...
The last 6 weeks of the pregnancy and the first couple weeks of the boys life were rough both emotionally and financially. At 30 weeks I ended up being admitted to the hospital for pre-term labor, aside from being scary it was a hospital admittance co-pay that I hadn't factored in and when I was put on bedrest for the next couple weeks it also meant no paycheck/ no leftover money for saving. We were fortunate in that the pre-term labor stopped, everything looked healthy and on track and my doctor allowed me to return to work on a part time schedule. Of course, in all my financial planning I had been thinking I would be pulling in a full time paycheck until 38 weeks. So that was another big hit to the financial plan that would get us through maternity leave without going further into debt.
At 34 weeks an ultrasound showed that one of the babies wasn't growing very well anymore (no big surprise there, I was huge by that point and couldn't imagine being able to stretch any further so I knew they must be pretty cramped for growing room)! The docs went into super monitoring mode and decided I should be induced at 36 weeks since I was also showing signs of preeclampsia. The boys were both thriving and healthy at birth so we got to bypass the NICU, which was a big concern of mine for multiple reasons and would have meant more hospital co-pays that we weren't planning on. However, being that they were so small at birth (the little guy was 4 pounds and 9 ounces and the "big" boy was 6 pounds and 7 ounces), the car seats that we had purchased cheaply used from a friend with twins wouldn't work and S had to run out and buy new car seats for smaller babies.
Within the first week home, we had a little choking incident with the small guy (which he recovered from so don't worry!) and took an expensive ambulance ride to the ER. We've also had regular check-ins with the doctor to monitor growth, all of which have a price tag I had never anticipated in the financial planning stage. And even though I stocked up on a bazzilion diapers and supplies, we have already made plenty of runs to the store for more stuff that I didn't know we needed in advance!
The bottom line is that, all my careful financial pre-baby planning didn't factor in a lot of the expenses we have already incurred and it's only the first month! I'm chocking it up to my inexperience at being a parent. I'm learning quickly that life with twins (or any kids for that matter) is going to be full of unpredictable twists and turns, unexpected costs, and any financial plan that I come up with now needs to be a little more flexible than pre-baby life!
Life with twin newborns is hectic and fragmented (it's taken me the entire day to write this post in increments of a few minutes at a time)! Needless to say, I haven't had a lot of time to devote to our budget and financial plan. I know we've pretty much blown the plan I had worked on pre-baby but I have no idea by how much. In the coming weeks I'll be trying to devote a little time each day to getting our finances back in order as well as getting back on this blog... so stay tuned for the continuation of my financial adventures in babyland!
Oh, are they ever SWEET. What cute little guys!
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