This is the big news I have been waiting to announce for a while now. My wife is expecting! Haha, it’s life-changing stuff and I’m sure everything is going to be different by the end of the year. In fact, things are already changing and moving along fast.
We found out in Apr 2019 and have been going for prenatal scans and tests with a gynae at Mount Elizabeth Orchard. The average cost of each visit (including purchase of supplements) so far is about S$250. The Harmony blood test was about S$700.
We are about midway through the 2nd trimester and it’s probably cost us about S$1,700 so far i.e. 4 visits and 1 blood test. We have also booked in our confinement nanny through a recommendation from my mother-in-law’s workplace colleague for 2 months from Dec 2019 to Jan 2020 for S$6,000 i.e. S$3,000 per month. More expensive because of CNY 2020.
Having a pregnancy and child is expensive yeah. I can only imagine the costs climbing upwards over time. Oh well, it’s a conscious decision made by the both of us so we have to do whatever it takes to make it work. Which brings me back to the reason as to why I did not resign from my job back in Apr 2019.
It was during the week I was going to tender my resignation (job was at its most unbearable point) that we found out my wife was pregnant. Even though we could probably continue with our way of life just on my wife’s salary income, I felt it would have been a selfish and unreasonable move on my part.
It’s interesting how your perspective can change once something so life-changing and important happens to you. Honestly, it felt like a wake-up call. As more time passed and I saw my wife deal with the effects of pregnancy & workplace stress, I realised the least I could do is support her by not screwing my life up.
So instead of resigning without a job, I kept looking for alternatives internally and externally until this internal job posting came up about a month later. Sometimes, it’s easy to focus on your own problems and forget that marriage is also a partnership. I have to admit it was tough getting to this point.
Things are better now as I finally have more resources and support in my current job. But it’s a case of too little and too late. I look forward to moving onto my new job in a role where I might be more appreciated and recognised under a direct manager that I respect more.
My wife is also preparing for the maternity and annual leave that she will take for about 6 months at the end of the year. Since she works in an Australian bank, they are more open to working mothers taking a longer time away from work to take care of the child.
One of the many things I am grateful for is that she does not work in a local bank like me. They are definitely not as supportive of working mothers in terms of the workplace culture and flexible work arrangements. However, the main issue is that there is a higher risk of retrenchment from your job at a foreign bank compared to a local bank where it’s more stable.
We might move in with my wife’s parents when she’s off on maternity and annual leave for about 6 months. We feel it’s better for her to have more support during this period of time. This also gives us more time to look for a bigger place to move out to i.e. from a 2 – bedroom to a 3 or 4 – bedroom apartment.
