A day in the life

It occurred to me I might be able to dictate as long as Bluetooth is turned off, so I'll try that today. I wanted to walk you through a day in my life so you can understand why it feels like I'm still working full time even though I'm only working 25 hours/week.

My first alarm goes off at 6 AM.  I roll over and nurse the baby one last time while he's still mostly asleep. My next alarm goes off at 6:30, and at that point I'm actually supposed to get out of bed. If I'm lucky, I can sneak away while he's still asleep; if I'm not, either I stay in bed a little longer or he wakes up with me, which makes the whole morning routine a bit more difficult. I take the dog out and feed him, then make some coffee and check my phone for emails and Facebook messages and whatnot. I need that time to wake my brain up. 

By 7 AM, it's time to wake up my Big Guy to start getting ready for school. He, like his mother, also has ADHD (or at least, we strongly suspect it and have just started the process of getting him diagnosed), so mornings are very challenging for both of us. I drag him out of bed and try to get him to choose what he wants for breakfast, and eventually he eats but that takes at least half an hour. So around 7:30, we begin the fight to get him to pick out clothes and get dressed, which has gotten even harder lately because he's not liking school anymore. He's been going to a really nice Montessori school for the last year and a half, but this year, he has a new teacher who is much more strict and less loving than last year's teacher, so he's really struggling and not enjoying it. At least that makes it a little bit less painful that we now have to transfer him into a public pre-K program because of my pay cut. But in the meantime, he still hates school and doesn't want to go, so therefore he doesn't cooperate with getting dressed, so I have to assist every step of the way and delay getting myself ready until he leaves with his dad at 8:20. 

At that point I can get into the shower and start getting myself ready. But of course, I'm still not just getting myself ready, I have to get the baby ready. That means washing bottle and pump parts if hubby hasn't done it the night before, which he was getting into a good habit of helping with while I put the kids to bed, but then he got sick last week and he hasn't helped since. I also use cloth diapers, for more cost savings, so I wash them the night before and put them in the dryer first thing in the morning, so by this time they're dry, and I need to pack the diaper bag, prepare bottles with the milk I pumped yesterday, and pack up everything I need to pump at work today. 

So some days, like today, I get out the door around 10 AM. That's a 4 hour morning routine, mind you. So I drop the baby off, get to work around 11, work for an hour or so, then take a half hour lunch and pumping break. I'm lucky that I only have to pump once a day to make nearly enough milk for Little Bit to drink the next day, and I've got a nice freezer stash saved up from when I was way over-producing early on. I get back to work for a few more hours and leave between 4 and 4:30.  

The commute home usually takes longer than the commute in, so I pick the boys up between 5:30 and 6.  We get home, and I start cooking dinner. If we're lucky I have dinner on the table by 6:30 or 7, we eat, and it's time to start the bedtime routine for Big Guy immediately after cleaning up from dinner. He only gets a bath if we get to the bedtime routine before 7 PM, and you don't want to know how rare that is. In theory, it's lights out and I come upstairs by 8 PM, but sometimes that's as late as 9 PM.  I change the baby for bed, nurse him to sleep, and crash myself pretty much immediately. Yes, I need a lot of sleep...8 to 9 hours, 10 would be nice...I've never been one who can get away with less sleep. 

So hopefully you can see how the whole day is filled with just getting ready for work, school, and day care, being at work, school, and day care, and getting ready for bed and the next day. Weekends are a little bit less rush rush rush, but there's still constantly stuff to do. There's no time during the week to do the little maintenance cleaning tasks that would make keeping the household in order more of a doable feat, so the weekends are spent on laundry and cleaning and dishes and going through the mail and whatever...all the usual household crap just fills up all the time. 

Once in a while, I try to reach out and make friends, but then I don't have time to spend with them and maintain and build a friendship, so they tend to fizzle out except for on Facebook, like all my long-distance friendships. I'd like to go to church on Sundays, and some weeks that happens, some weeks it doesn't. I'd love to have time for volunteering and stuff like that...that was always a value that was instilled in me growing up, but there's just no time for anything.  No hobbies...I used to like to knit, and I was working on a baby blanket for Big Guy when I was pregnant with him, but it's still only about 2 feet long. I am determined to eventually catch up to how tall he is, like by the time he goes away to college, and send it with him. Little Bit will be lucky if he gets a piece of fleece fabric cut directly off of the fabric store bolt and not even hemmed at the edges.

I don't know what else to say.  I'm feeling very defeated lately. Maybe I can try to come up with a way to make this more productive... Does anyone know of any opportunities for part time data analysis work from home? I am a good Matlab programmer, and I'm sure I could figure out any other kind of coding people wanted. I'd really like to get into a different field where I know they must need specialized data analysts.  I don't want to be the PI of the lab or anything. The field I had in mind also has a closer relevance to clinical work, which appeals to me in some ways, but I'm afraid I would need to do another postdoc to get the skills needed to do that work even though it is closely related to what I'm currently doing. Maybe I could get away with applying directly for a job doing that kind of analysis? 

Oh I forgot to mention earlier, one of the reasons the morning routine gets so stretched out, aside from dealing with ADHD me and ADHD Big Guy, is nursing the baby. Little Bit likes to decide it's time to nurse while I'm in the middle of getting ready, and then fall asleep and stay latched on for like an hour. If I was ready, I would just take him to daycare and let her give him a bottle, but I can't just let him cry. I could unlatch him after 10 minutes or after he falls sleep or whatever, but I'm a sucker for a sleep-nursing baby, and I don't believe in rushing him. 

I just feel like I should be able to do this...I should be able to take care of my family's needs, my personal needs to maintain my sanity...because I am getting depressed over this. I feel like I'm kind of stuck.  How am I supposed to find a new job when I don't have a second of spare time to spend on looking for one?  Yeah, maybe I can look for jobs on my phone while I'm nursing the baby, but that's not exactly conducive to actually preparing a good targeted cover letter and resume. 

...I babbled on for a while after this, but it got repetitive, and I got sick of editing it. So, here you go. I wrote this a week or more ago, but I'm posting as it is, to capture the feelings then, even though they've evolved some in the meantime. 

Part time postdoc

Okay, take 3 at this blogging thing. I'm going to try dictating what I want my blog to say during my hour-long commute each day, and then editing it later. My hope is that will allow me more time to do this on a regular basis. I'm feeling the need to vent again, as it's been another two years since my last post. I'm not sure how the dictation is going to work, but I'll edit when I get home today and see how it goes. So what I need to vent about now is...wait, I should reintroduce myself. I now have a PhD, earned in May of 2014, and I very shortly got pregnant with my second son, who was born in March 2015. So my Big Guy is 5, my Little Bit is 8 months, and I am a postdoc in the same lab where I got my PhD. 

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, I have an hour plus commute each way, so given the hours that childcare is available, minus the commuting time, I am unable to work full-time. I decided I am able to reliably work about 25 hours a week, and my boss has decided that he is no longer willing to pay me as a full-time postdoc. I'm in the process of converting to a part-time position, but it's still unclear whether I will be moving up to the faculty level equivalent that postdocs are usually promoted to after they've been at the University too long, or demoted to a senior technician / staff position.  The main differences are in leave tracking and benefits - pay is flexible enough on either end to keep me at approximately the same base salary. I tried to convince my PI that I was worth more on an hourly basis, but my lack of productivity as measured by first author papers (I have zero)...ah...well, this just didn't go over well. 

Honestly, I'm pissed. I'm furious that I have earned a PhD and developed a very unique and strong skill set in data analysis and other hard to replace things, and I'm not even worth enough money to support my family on the number of hours that I can legitimately work within the hours that I have childcare and an hour commute. This is insane! I need to start looking for another job, maybe in another lab, but negotiating for a better paid part-time position from the get-go, or maybe in industry. I am definitely willing to relocate, and maybe I can avoid living an hour away from wherever I work this time. 

I don't even know what to say. I don't know how to put into words how angry and disappointed and sad I am right now. Not just at my boss personally (I feel very undervalued by him right now), but it's also the institutional structure of academia that makes it impossible for him to pay me a reasonable amount...well, not impossible, but...hard. It's ridiculous that I can have the [dictation interpreted "Tryon halogen"...WTF was I trying to say there??] and unique skill set, and I can't establish the worklife balance that I need to keep myself sane and my family cared for, emotionally, physically, and financially. Something is broken. It sucks because I'm taking a $15,000 pay cut in order to work part time, but it still feels like full time because it's still a commitment from first thing in the morning to last thing at night, and I have no free time whatsoever. I can't even maintain my household. 

Unfortunately, this driving and dictating thing is not working very well because it stops every few seconds, and I have to look at my phone to figure out where it stopped and press the microphone button again, and then the podcast I was listening to restarts itself even though I closed the program. So I'm just going to edit this post and put it up, and we'll see if I ever get around to writing anymore because I have no time. 

Monday morning dread

I'm laying in bed awake at 4 am, dreading going in to the lab today because I've fallen behind schedule again and don't want to admit it to my PI, who will be expecting an update.  It's been about 3 weeks since we last spoke, and I've only managed to write about 450 words in that time. I'm not sure why this always seems to happen...whether it's my neuroses or his added pressure or some combination thereof, but I feel the need to make excuses for my lack of progress. I haven't been depressed, per se...it's more of an anxiety about moving into uncharted territory:  I've never written a discussion section before. And lots of personal stressors have had me completely distracted and unable to focus on my work...so maybe I'll just blame the ADD...but then why don't the anxiolytics and stimulants help?  I even tried Hemingway's advice to "write drunk; edit sober" a couple of days last week...that's how I managed the 450 words I did get drafted.  So not only am I ashamed of this lack of progress, I'm also doubting whether I'll be able to finish the rest of my dissertation by the late-January deadline. Hence, my desire to hide under the covers and stay in denial & avoidance mode. :-(

Brainstorming blog topics

I'm having an off day, meaning absolutely no productivity. I'm still in the throes of dissertation writing, and it's still miserable. Every day I go through this internal struggle, never wanting to get started, but getting more and more discouraged as the day drags on. As I mentioned in the last post, I have a billion thoughts running through my head, distracting me, and stressing me out, and I need an outlet. I don't even know where to start, so I thought I'd just brainstorm some of the various topics I'd like to explore via this blog. I hope it will help me simply put the deliberations on hold for a while, knowing I'll come back to them later, but I also hope it will give anyone who stumbles across the blog a reason to stay, if they're interested in my thoughts on any of these. Ideally, once I do write a post on each one, I'll come back and add a link to this post.

• my struggles with adult ADD / ADHD, depression, and anxiety
• productivity skills I've learned, and resources for others struggling to complete their dissertations
• the life-altering career decisions that will have to be made soon
• trying to live a value-driven, meaningful life
• achieving some semblance of work-life balance
• self-improvement and family-improvement
• marriage, compromise, and co-parenting
• my science-minded opinions on birth, parenting, education, and anything else I feel like exploring

I'm pretty sure most of these will merit more than just one post, so maybe they'll end up being content tags instead, but anyway, hopefully that gives you a vague idea of where I'm going with this blog revival.  If you're interested in anything in particular, feel free to ask in the comments, and I'll try to get to that topic sooner.

Aspiring...to come back from the dead

Sorry about going dark for so long...it turns out having a kid is very time-consuming! ;-P My precious first-born is now 3 years old, and I'm anxiously awaiting my PhD defense this coming March, after which hubby and I will start trying for #2! This has been a long, hard slog, which I will probably go back and share some of the stories from, but the reason I've come back to restart the blog is that, similar to when I was debating on having the first child, I have a thousand and one thoughts running through my head, trying to decide what to do next. More later.

32 weeks, 5 days

I was reminded yesterday that it has been a ridiculously long time since I posted, again. I'm in my 8th month of pregnancy and still doing well...starting to get a bit more uncomfortable, from the baby riding up against my ribs and causing reflux, to the weight of this big baby causing pain in my pubic bone and the summer heat causing swollen feet and ankles. But overall, the pregnancy has really been treating me well. No complications - my "low-lying placenta" resolved itself completely and the baby has been head-down since my 25-week ultrasound. Hubby and I took a 12-hour roadtrip a couple weeks ago to go back to our hometown for 2 weddings and 2 baby showers, and I had no trouble with that either. We got a ton of loot from the showers - so much that we had to return a bunch of bulky items to re-buy when we got home! So with all that taken care of and a couple more people to take up on their offers of hand-me-downs, I think we're pretty set for gear and clothes. Time to start stocking up on diapers and wipes, I guess.

The more worrying thing that I have yet to figure out is childcare...I've really been dragging my feet on this because it's very anxiety-provoking to be trying to find the best possible person/place to care for your precious infant but to be restricted to such a ridiculously minuscule budget. So far, I've surveyed the field online, finding a dozen or so home childcares and centers that are on the lowest end of the price range, since that's all we can afford. I mean to call the other NAFCC accredited home childcares in the area to check their prices since they usually don't have websites...but somewhere between web/email and phone/in-person-visit is where I hit my brick wall and start making excuses like needing to take time off work to make calls and visits during business hours, etc. Any advice on getting over that anxiety and getting my ass in gear would be much appreciated!

I have a similar problem at work... Things have been going fine, generally. I've pretty much wrapped up the experiments I wanted to complete before I got too incapacitated by my big belly, and my undergrad assistant is back from a 6-week summer trip so she can finish up the rest of it without much assistance from me. The problem now is I have 2 papers I'm supposed to be writing (one of which I tried to get out of, but my committee "strongly encouraged" it, so 5 against 1 wins). There's still a load of histology and data analysis to wade through on both, in addition to the actual writing, so I just don't exactly know where to start. I've always had anxiety about starting writing projects, so this is nothing new, and probably partially explains why I'm beginning my 6th year of graduate school with no publications to my name (but there is a 4th author paper to be submitted any day now, whoohoo!). The other part of that equation is the fact that I chose a wildly ambitious project involving setting up a new technique in a lab (and in fact, at a school) where no one had done it before. Crazy naive me...but really, I wouldn't trade it for a thing. I learned so much more through that painstaking process of troubleshooting every little thing than I ever would have if someone had just handed down all the protocols and tips and tricks of the trade. Well anyway...speaking of work, I better get to it!

ETA: Oh! I completely forgot to mention a very important point! My project (and in fact, the whole lab) is now completely funded! We got both R-01s renewed, plus I had that other foundation grant I mentioned last fall, so we're all covered now. Whoohoo!

24 weeks, 3 days

I'm not sure I have anything particularly interesting to report on today, but I figured I'd pop in and say hi. I'm still feeling pretty good...my only complaint is some hip pain when I wake up in the morning, but it's different from whatever I was experiencing earlier in pregnancy. It doesn't seem to be related to pressure, since it only shows up in my right hip, regardless of which side I spent more time on overnight. It's not alleviated by sleeping with a pillow between my knees or under my right hip. But it's not that bad and tends to go away eventually after I've been up and around for a few hours, so things could certainly be worse.

Hubby still hates Bradley class...a little more each week, in fact. He thinks the instructor is a sadist for enjoying seeing the dads pushed out of their comfort zones. But he's still suffering through because he knows it's important to me. He's a sweetheart like that. He also demonstrated his sweetness with the surprise I found on my nightstand yesterday morning. It said "Happy Mother's Day, You're Almost There" and had one of our 20-week ultrasound pictures with a bubble coming out of the baby's mouth, saying "You gestate great, Mommy. I love you." :-)

21 weeks, 1 day

Hi blog-world. Long time no see...sorry about that. Everything is
going well with my pregnancy. I'm showing clearly enough that
strangers feel comfortable making comments now! :-P I've been
feeling the baby move a lot more lately, so it's been fun trying to
learn his likes and dislikes and sleep-wake patterns.

I found out last week that I'm having a boy, and I think we've decided
on a name for him... I wish I could ask you what you think, but it's
a very unique (and totally geeky) name based on a famous case in the
development of my field of life science, so it would give way too many
clues to my identity. Most lay people won't recognize the person, but
the name is recognizable and pronounceable despite it's rarity, and
the nickname we would call him by is popular enough to be in the top
500 on the social security baby name list. Of my colleagues who know
the story behind it, half of them think it's awesome that I would name
my kid that and the other half think Hubby and I are on crack. :-P
The grandparents-to-be all seem to be on the side of thinking it's a
bit odd, but they like the nickname. I've been feeling sort of torn
about it myself, but I can't seem to think of anything else that
sounds right and means something to us... Maybe we've just been
thinking about it for so long that it has kind of stuck. So, like I
said, I guess we have a name!

Let's see...what else is going on? Hubby and I started our Bradley
Method natural childbirth prep class last week, and so far I'm loving
it and Hubby feels a bit put upon, in that he has been assigned a new
set of duties (including nightly massage to help me practice relaxing
during labor, but we haven't been doing that anyway) on top of working
more than full-time and doing most of the housework. But he seems to
be giving it a fair chance, which I appreciate. We'll see how the
next one goes, tomorrow night.

So anyway, just wanted to say a quick hello to let you know I'm still
alive and well. :-)

--
Sent from my mobile device

13 Weeks, 3 Days

Yeah, like I said...I suck at this blog thing. I haven't even been reading the other women in science blogs lately. And now that I've gone fully public about my pregnancy, I have much less motivation to post about it on this anonymous blog. I suppose I can use it to complain about some of the more embarrassing pregnancy symptoms (OMG the gas is AWFUL!). But I'll go ahead and update you few loyal readers anyway. :-)

My first trimester screening tests came back perfectly normal and healthy, and the angle of the genital tubercle suggests it's a girl. I did some Pubmed searching and those early ultrasound gender detection methods seem to be about 80-90% accurate. I'll be thrilled if it is a girl, as will my mother-in-law (who has no daughters or granddaughters), but I'll have to be on guard for all of the pink frilly gift outfits I don't want to dress my daughter in... :-P

Alright, that's all I have time for now. Drop me an email if you miss me! ;-)

10 Weeks

Man, I suck at keeping up with this blog as often as I intended...
:-P Oh well, here's today's update:

I made 10 weeks today, the beginning of the fetal period and
quarter-of-the-way mark. I'm still feeling reasonably well, although
I'm very tired, starting to experience some round ligament pain, and I
actually threw up for the first time in this pregnancy last weekend.

I mentioned a surprise visit from my dad last week, and that was fun,
although unexpected and without much warning. :-) He's just
spontaneous like that sometimes. He wasn't particularly worried about
my mom's organic food kick (have I mentioned she thinks her grandbaby
is in mortal danger because I don't eat organic?), but he did express
some concern about raising a baby in my dirty house. (Don't tell
Hubby...he's the only one who does any cleaning and would be so pissed
that Dad found his work inadequate!) I'm a big believer in building
the immune system through exposure to plenty of germs and allergens.
:-) Ah well, to each his or her own.

My work-life balance advocacy crew is also making great progress on
pushing that grad student parental leave policy through. We have a
meeting with the assistant dean next week and are working on
scheduling one with the head of the new work-life center soon.
Everyone has seemed so supportive so far that I'm feeling pretty good
that it will actually be implemented without much of a fight. W00t!

--
Sent from my mobile device

8 weeks, 5 days

Things are a bit out of whack this week due to a spontaneous visit
from my dad, but all is well and I'll catch up more over the weekend.

--
Sent from my mobile device

7 weeks, 4 days

I announced my pregnancy to Beloved PI yesterday, and it went perfectly. :-) Again, I find myself wondering, why do I stress myself out about these things? He always has my back! Best PI ever. So yeah, I said "I'm pregnant," and he smiled and said "I've been wondering when you were going to tell me that." I don't think he actually knew, since I hadn't told anyone else at work, but they all saw it coming. I had been pretty openly baby crazy since that last intimidating conversation back in May, so I guess he had plenty of time to work through any mixed feelings he may have had. Yesterday, he was genuinely happy for me, and somewhat cautious, anxious for me to make it past that 12 week mark. I'm just happy with my little bean's heartbeat!

6 weeks, 6 days

I got to see my little lentil bean's heartbeat yesterday! It's just a little flicker in the middle of a 6 mm blob, but apparently that's exactly as it should be for this point in my pregnancy. Everything is going perfectly and I'm thrilled!

I'm thinking of telling Beloved PI this weekend (after confirming everything is good, before anyone else at work finds out, and over the weekend where there are fewer people around and he has some low key time to process). I expect somewhat of a mixed reaction from him. He'll be happy for me, because he has his own precious little girl and knows I've wanted a baby for a while, but he'll be upset at the prospect of losing me, if only for a couple of months, and he'll be terrified about affording to pay me during my maternity leave, since the last big grant runs out right around my due date. I'm sort of assuming the graduate division will take care of it, since they guarantee my stipend for 6 years of adequate progress (I'll be starting my 6th year then) and have a "recommendation" of 6 weeks paid maternity leave in the student handbook (which my advocacy crew is working to extend to the whole grad school as a minimum of 8 weeks for both parents). I'm hopeful that we can work something out, one way or the other, by starting as early as possible.

Anyway, any suggestions on breaking the news gently?

6 weeks, 4 days

Halfway through the first trimester already, can you believe it? That
whole counting from last menstrual period thing makes it seem like
time has just flown by. :-P Anyway, I'm still feeling pretty good.
I've been a bit nauseas at times, but no vomiting. Shall I spare you
the details of my yuckier or more private symptoms? I think so. The
grad school related bits of the experience will presumably be more
interesting to my readers, right?

Still haven't told anyone at work, and I definitely won't until after
tomorrow's ultrasound confirms a heartbeat. I thought I'd wait for
the end of my first trimester, but people keep telling me they'll know
long before then. I figured as soon as my symptoms start to interfere
with my work, or I start showing, but I may decide to tell my PI even
before that. My thinking there is to hopefully get him to stop piling
more non-thesis-related work on me every day, but I doubt it will
really work.

I'm expecting (hoping) to get my first publication out before the baby
comes. It should, for one thing, serve as evidence of "adequate
progress" or whatever they call it, in case there ends up being any
debate on my request for paid leave. It turns out that I'm due at the
end of August, the same time as our 2nd R01 runs out, so the graduate
program may have to pick up the slack on my stipend during a brief
funding gap.

My division already has a recommendation on the books for 6 weeks paid
maternity leave, but I'm still hoping we can push this new 8 week
policy through in time, or at least I hope I can argue it successfully
for myself. Six weeks is just such a pitifully short time...the
absolute minimum for recovery from an uncomplicated vaginal
birth...nevermind bonding with the new baby.

So my little work-life balance advocacy crew has accumulated support
for our policy proposal from various other people and organizations
representing women or grad students, and we're just waiting on some
sort of official statement from each so we can present it to the dean.
I also volunteered (before I knew I was pregnant...) to organize a
larger group meeting to find new leaders and get sub-groups working on
other projects. Unfortunately, since discovering my pregnancy, I've
had a hard enough time focussing on work, and I haven't done a thing
on this meeting, preferring instead to chat on the bulletin boards at
babycenter.com all day! <Sigh>

--
Sent from my mobile device

5 weeks, 1 day

All is still going well. We told all of our parents yesterday with
pictures of the positive pregnancy test in Christmas cards. :-)
Everyone is very excited for us. I'm going to see my mom's side of
the extended family for the next few days and hope to share the news
with them too.

On an un-baby-related note, the airline lost my luggage yesterday, so
I have no gifts/clothes/toiletries/drugs/cell phone charger. They're
supposed to deliver it to my aunt's house by 3pm, but for now, I
should probably stop running my Blackberry battery down with long blog
posts. :-P

--
Sent from my mobile device

4 Weeks, 4 Days

I'm so excited today! I scheduled my first prenatal appt for Jan 6
with the one midwife on my insurance network that has been recommended
for natural childbirth, and I found out they do an ultrasound at that
first visit! I'll be exactly 7 weeks from my last period, or 6 weeks,
5 days when using ovulation to determine the date (that's how I've
been doing my blog titles). I hope that's not too soon to detect a
heartbeat. :-)

Anyway, I'm glad to see I still have a couple of readers, despite my
sparse posting. I'm going to try to post much more often during my
pregnancy - somewhere between daily and weekly, as the mood strikes me
- so I can use it like a journal to chronicle the whole experience. I
also have a really pretty (physical, paper) journal that I got as a
gift several years ago and never used. I think I'll use that to write
letters to my baby...maybe one for each trimester of pregnancy, then
one for each birthday until the kid is old enough to appreciate it.

--
Sent from my mobile device

4 Weeks, 2 Days

I'm pregnant! Due August 27, 2010. I'm only about a day late so far,
but I got a bright blaring pink pair of lines on my home pregnancy
test yesterday. So...yay! Of course, it's still a big secret, so
once again, if you are one of the few people who have figured out who
I am, please be discrete.

It was only our 2nd month of trying, and the first time we really got
the timing right, so I guess my family really is as fertile as we seem
to be, given the number of unplanned pregnancies among my cousins.
Let's hope our reputation for relatively quick and easy labors also
holds up, as I'd like to go as natural as possible. More on my birth
plan later, I guess.

For now, I just need to pick a care provider (OB or midwife) who
encourages and supports drug- and intervention-free childbirth, which
are remarkably few and far between in my area. There's only one or
two hospitals that seem to be really good about it, and of course,
neither are on my health plan. I got one recommendation for a midwife
in my network, so I've requested a first appointment with her, but the
hospital she delivers at has a reputation as the local baby factory,
which is not a good thing.

As far as pregnancy itself goes, so far, there's nothing too far out
of the ordinary. I had a tiny bit of light brown spotting today,
which made me slightly nervous, but I'm sure it's just implantation
spotting or something. I'm not even telling Hubby, as he's a nervous
wreck already. I've been reading every pregnancy book I can get my
hands on for a while now, but just yesterday, I picked up a book for
him at the library, "Pacify Me: A Handbook for Freaked Out New Dads,"
which he is enjoying so far.

Anyway, just wanted to share the good news with my anonymous blog,
since I'm not supposed to be telling friends yet!

--
Sent from my mobile device

So, we've decided

We're trying to get pregnant. No, the lab didn't get any new funding,
and no, Hubby and I haven't received raises. So what has changed,
then? Well, two major things changed: (1) Hubby got a promotion,
which is not only a great step along his desired career path, but it
also switches him from a night shift schedule with rotating days off
to a schedule of regular work hours and regular work days with
weekends and holidays off. This will make daycare planning way
easier, and as I think I mentioned earlier, I've already decided we
can afford full-time care with a small, inexpensive home child care
provider. (2) I realized there is no end in sight to our financial
stress at the lab, so there's no point waiting for things to calm
down. I was looking at the budgets of our two big R-01s, one of which
is being submitted for renewal in a couple of weeks, and the other
will be resubmitted in February. Even with both of these requesting
the full $250k, we won't have enough to cover everyone's salaries,
much less enough to add another student in my section of the lab
(which would have been nice so things wouldn't grind to a screeching
halt when I go on maternity leave). But anyway, the point is I'm not
willing to wait forever for a perfectly comfortable lab situation that
will probably never happen. We're just going to go for it!

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Sent from my mobile device

Reconsidering, again

So I've been thinking about the baby thing again lately... I'm
driving Hubby absolutely nuts with all of my indecision, so he says
it's up to me, just let him know when I've decided it's time. I
really want it to be now, and I've pretty much decided we can make the
daycare thing work out one way or another. We've got some credit card
debt that, if paid off, would free up a few hundred dollars a month.
We've got staggered schedules, mine is very flexible, and I could
probably work from home half the time, so we may be able to get a away
with only part-time childcare. I think we can do it. Plenty of
people raise kids with less. And everyone I talk to about how badly I
want a baby says "just do it!" Apparently a couple of my classmates
are getting pretty baby crazy too, so I think we should all have them
at once and use our strength in numbers to demand more family-friendly
polices. :-) So anyway...by now I'm sure you're wondering "Well
then, what are you waiting for? Go for it already!"
Well, it seems we're back to "it all depends on funding." You see,
even though my project got funding, that little award was just a drop
in the bucket compared to all the funding our lab has lost. We're in
a really shitty situation until something new comes through. There
are a couple of things pending that we should hear back on by the end
of the month, but if neither of them come through, the first round of
lay-offs will come in the spring. That'll be the two postdocs who've
been here the longest. Then if the thing we're submitting next
doesn't come through, the whole lab tanks next fall. I'm not too
worried about losing my own position, since I've got that small grant
to cover part of my stipend and the cost of my animals and supplies,
combined with a guarantee of backup funding from my graduate program.
However, I'm not comfortable with the idea of taking time off for
maternity leave (whether paid or unpaid), while the lab is slowly
drowning and thrashing about wildly from interim sources of funding to
keep us afloat. Beloved PI is in full on panic mode, putting ever
increasing pressure on us to publish our existing work and produce
more preliminary data for new grant proposals. Unless we hear very
soon that there is some new funding coming through, next summer is not
looking like the best time to duck out for a couple of months. The
fall, on the other hand, might be a perfect time to take a break,
because there won't be a lab left to feel such loyalty to.

So I'm thinking I'll put off the baby-making decision until at least
the end of this month, when we'll have a better idea of the lab's
financial outlook for the coming year. If the lab gets funding and
we're okay, we'll start trying for a baby immediately. If no stopgap
funding materializes, I'll wait to get pregnant until the due date
would come after the end of the current grant cycle, so that my
(unpaid) maternity leave coincides with the gap in funding, and hope
that Beloved PI is still employed by Excellent U by the time I intend
to return. (I'll save my bitterness and confusion about the meaning
of tenure at Excellent U for another post.)

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Sent from my mobile device

Advocacy

An anonymous commenter expressed interest in my work-life balance advocacy group, so I'm going to try to tell you more about it. As I mentioned in that post, I don't really know what I'm doing...I've never led any kind of student group before, and the only advocacy I ever do is sending pre-written form letters to my senators and representatives about research-related issues. Luckily I'm working with a couple of ladies who have more experience with such things, so if we can just maintain our enthusiasm for longer than a month, I'm sure we'll make some progress.

So, here's the history, current status, and future plans and goals of the work-life balance advocacy group at Excellent U:

First, there was a women's support group composed of graduate students in the Psychology program (not my field), led by Leader. They talked about a lot of issues faced by women in academia, and wanted to do something about the lack of maternity leave and affordable childcare
for graduate students at Excellent U. Since they didn't want to lose the tight-knit support group they had come to love, Leader formed a spinoff group that would be focused on advocacy and opened to the whole graduate school.

When I heard about this through a graduate school email, I immediately contacted the leader and enthusiastically offered my help. At the time, all I did was post fliers on my side of campus, and help set up chairs at the meeting. There, I learned that these Psych grads had been working on putting together a survey to be sent out to all grad students and assess interest in and need for family-friendly policies. This was to be used as a data collection tool to bring to the administration and say "See how many people this affects? See how many people care?" In addition, we planned to collect policies from other universities (particularly the ones Excellent U considers its top-tier peer institutions), so we could appeal to their competitive nature.

We also identified a need for more networking, contact with, and advice from female professors with children. A couple months later, we convened two panels of such women faculty (one more science oriented, and one for humanities and administration) to discuss their work-life balance and invited grad students and post-docs from across the university (I even created a Facebook event page for this one!). For this, we made lots of faculty and administrative contacts who were supportive of our cause, and we got a little funding for refreshments from the campus women's center. They went really well and got people talking for a bit, but I'm not sure we made adequate use of the momentum we had built, as both the leader and I were getting a bit distracted with other realities of life and research.

Back in the first half of May, before I realized I couldn't afford to have a kid in grad school, I was trying to get a better feel for how maternity leave was actually implemented for Excellent U grad students, in practice, since there is no official policy. I sort of used the work-life balance group as a front for this inquiry to avoid anyone realizing this was a personal concern of mine and forwarding my inquiry to my DGS and advisor, since it's all worked out on a case-by-case basis. But I did get some useful info out of it (most students in my division get 6 weeks off, 4 of which are unpaid, the other 2 being considered sick leave, and no, even NRSA supported students can't get the 2 months paid leave NIH allows), and the person I contacted asked me to come speak about the issue at a student advisory council meeting in the fall.

Meanwhile, the nearly completed survey fell to the wayside because there were some problems getting IRB approval, which they wanted so they could publish the results. And the collection of other universities' policies also didn't get very far for quite some time. Nothing new happened for a couple months.

Finally, enter YoungFeminist, a 2nd year student in my program who joined our near-forgotten advocacy group, bringing loads of enthusiasm and energy back into it. She did more work researching other schools policies in a day than the rest of us had in several months! We decided it was time to hold another large group meeting and try to get back our momentum, but first, we would have a smaller meeting of a core group of organizers: myself, Leader, YoungFeminist, another psych grad student, and a humanities rep. Meanwhile, I created a Facebook page to get people interested and talking in advance of the big meeting.

So that's where we are now: about to have a planning meeting to figure out how to get ourselves organized in such a way that things keep moving and momentum keeps building regardless of the waxing and waning of individual energy levels. Any advice is welcome!