“I didn’t want it to make it seem like I’m trying to miss work or something. The second day I told my boss, ‘My wife is still in labor,’ and he just said, ‘You’re forcing my hand, if you aren’t in work by 8 tomorrow we are going to terminate you.'”

On January 1, Cainan Austin was officially the first baby born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 2017.

His father, Lamar Austin — a United States Army veteran who served in Iraq in 2006 as an ammunitions specialist — was there to witness the birth, beside his wife and Cainan’s mother, at the hospital.

A few hours prior, he had received a text from his employer, Salerno Protective Services, informing him that he had been fired.

“I just responded ‘ok’,” Austin said to his local newspaper, the Concord Monitor. “I was in the hospital, it was a long night, and I wasn’t trying to argue with nobody about a job while my wife was in labor.”

According to the the New England periodical, the job with the company was new and Austin was still in the midst of a probationary period. The contract he signed when he was hired stated he had to be “on call” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so his termination was and is, unfortunately for his family of four, perfectly legal.

“Maybe I just wasn’t working there long enough for them to want to keep me.”

A new opportunity may be on the horizon, however, according to the following from Task & Purpose:

Prior to working there, he held jobs as a crossing guard, at Target, and Pitco, a company that makes oil fryers for fast food companies. And while he was unemployed, his church helped him and his family get back on the feet.

He hopes eventually to get into electrical work.

After reading Austin’s story, Denis Beaudoin, the business manager from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Concord, reached out to Austin, offering him the chance to apply for an apprenticeship. Three other companies approached him as well, and a fundraiser pledged to help his family out financially.

“Sometimes you lose something and you get something even better.”

“It’s been tough, but God has always provided for me when I needed it. Some kind of help always came in the strangest forms.”