Inadequate

Yesterday was my first day home alone with Petunia- Hubby had to go back to work. He'll take some more time off in January, when we will both work part time. It did not start well. I am still getting over the cold that Pumpkin brought home to us from day care, and between my plugged up nose and sore throat and Petunia's decision to squeeze an extra middle of the night feeding into her schedule, I was seriously short on sleep. Pumpkin did NOT want to get ready for day care- and let's just say I'm not really happy with how I handled that parenting challenge. I think there should be a rule that only one child in a given household can be difficult in any one day. Since Petunia had insisted on eating at 2 AND 4, Pumpkin should not have been allowed to tantrum about getting ready for day care.

It wasn't a terrible day. I spent most of it either feeding Petunia (hello, 6 week growth spurt!) or bouncing her back to sleep after she woke up from a nap she needed. After a day spent helping Petunia sleep, I wasn't really in the mood for an evening spent helping Pumpkin sleep, but no one asked me. Pumpkin set a new record and took over an hour to fall asleep. I really need to figure out how to teach a toddler how to go to sleep. I wonder if conscious relaxation techniques would work on a toddler? I can't really have her use my trick of reciting a mantra in her head- I think that would lead to a rousing rendition of the ABC song or "Down by the Station". I am seriously looking forward to the day where I only have to worry about my own sleep issues. But I digress.

Given the rough start to my day and my general sleep deprived state, I should feel like a rock start for managing to achieve anything. I called my disability insurance company to continue my efforts to get them to pay me for the time I took off before Petunia was born. And I paid my hospital bill. That is TWO things in addition to caring for Petunia, not even counting the fact that I showered, and I think we all know that the consensus is that you should only aim to do ONE thing a day.

But I don't feel like a rock star. In fact, I feel a bit inadequate. I think the problem is that I can't help but compare myself to Hubby, who is the genetic source of Pumpkin's unbelievably high energy levels and low need for sleep.

Here is what Hubby accomplished in the 5 weeks that he was off from work, in addition to the obvious things like bouncing/holding Petunia for naps when necessary and playing with Petunia:

• Cut hair
• Bought bamboo trellis for backyard
• Got tree in front yard trimmed
• Checked tires on car
• Got headlight on other car fixed
• Replaced the outside light that was smashed when Pumpkin threw the door open
• Installed door stop to prevent future light smashage
• Replaced air filter on furnace
• Touched up paint in Petunia's room
• Took junk in garage to Goodwill (two car loads!)
• Recycled electronics piled in garage
• Organized garage so that we can get a child into each side of the car
• Replaced inner tubes on bike
• Sent away for new passport

I just copied the above from the To Do list he wrote for himself the day we got home from the hospital. He crossed everything off his list. I think he mowed the lawn, too.

Here is what I accomplished during the same time period:

• Fed Petunia
• Regained ability to lay on my side and to get out of bed quickly
• Cut toenails (twice!)
• Found halloween costume for Pumpkin
• Added Petunia to my insurance
• Had several phone conversations with my short term disability insurance provider about the fact that they didn't pay me for the weeks I was off work before Petunia was born despite my doctor's signature sending me out from work
• Organized flu vaccinations for family

I resisted the urge to put "showered every day" on that list. Now you could argue that item #1 is a pretty big one, and balances about 5 things on Hubby's list. In fact, I argue this frequently. But still... you have to admit, my list looks pretty inadequate next to Hubby's. I may be the only wife in the world who wants her husband to stop doing so many chores....

Quick Thought on Newborns

It occurred to me, as I was bouncing Petunia down for the umpteenth time (she kept burping or pooping herself awake during her much needed morning nap)... one of the nice things about having a newborn again is that I sing a lot more. Petunia likes to be bounced and sung to. I have a couple of playlists for the purpose.

Pumpkin used to like the same thing. Now, if Hubby or I try to sing along with her DVDs (we do know most of the songs by heart, afterall), she tells us "No. You don't sing. Only the man sings." The man is whoever is singing on the DVD. In her defense, this is a fair critique of our singing abilities.

Cross That Off the To Do List

As of 1 p.m. yesterday afternoon, my little family is as protected from the flu as we can be. Pumpkin got the second of her two H1N1 vaccine doses yesterday. Hubby and I had gotten ours last week (we qualify because we have a newborn in our house). We all got our seasonal flu shots last month.

Phew. I'm glad that's done.

I sure hope the people in charge of planning for pandemic avian flu have been paying attention, taking notes, and thinking about what we can do better, because I give our performance during the swine flu pandemic a C-minus at best.

On the plus side, a vaccine was produced and expedited through the necessary tests (and yes, I think it has had plenty of testing and is safe). A sensible plan for who should get priority access to the vaccine as it rolled off the production lines was put in place. Public health experts made valiant efforts to communicate the priorities and the reasons for those priorities.

On the negative side, the distribution of the vaccine has been unnecessarily confusing. I can only speak to what happened here in San Diego, but I don't necessarily mean this as a criticism of our San Diego authorities. My understanding from my inside sources is that some of the screwiest decisions were taken at a higher level of government. I have two main observations of things that could have been done better:

1. Once the vaccine started arriving in San Diego county, its availability was announced on the San Diego county website, and eventually, in the local media. The majority of the vaccine went to doctor's offices and clinics, not to the county's own public health clinics. However, the county's website and the media only reported the locations of the public health clinics- they didn't say where else the vaccine had gone. Not surprisingly, long lines formed at the public health clinics, since this was the only place we knew had the vaccine (I had checked with my doctors, and they did not have it).

If we wanted to rely on our usual vaccine distribution networks- i.e., people's primary care physicians- then more of an effort should have been made to make sure that most doctors got at least some vaccine. My family uses one of the big medical groups in San Diego, and some friends of ours use one of the other ones. Neither had any vaccine.

If we wanted to rely more on vaccination clinics, then the locations of all of those clinics should have been announced. My family was able to stand in long lines on multiple days only because I am out on maternity leave. Asking working parents to do that is just ridiculous. Yes, we all want to protect our kids from the flu. But we want to keep the jobs that allow us to feed and clothe them, too.

2. We needed to prioritize not just who got the vaccine, but who got each type of vaccine. Our public health department received far more of the FluMist (live, attenuated) vaccine than the shot. The FluMist is just as safe and effective for most people, but there is a lot of misinformation out there about it, so some people chose the shot even though they could have had the FluMist. This meant that they ran short of the shot and had to limit its distribution to just pregnant women, leaving children under 2 and people with chronic conditions (like asthma) with no options. I think they should have told people that if they met the criteria for the FluMist, that is what they were getting, and saved the more limited shot supplies for the people for whom FluMist is not an option.

We went to get Hubby and me vaccinated on the third day after a large batch of doses arrived (they arrived on Friday afternoon, and we waited until Monday so that we could send Pumpkin to day care and not try to wait in a two hour line with a toddler AND a newborn). While we were waiting in line, they announced that only FluMist would be available. Technically, I should have skipped the vaccination at that point. I have very mild asthma. However, getting me vaccinated (and getting antibodies into my breastmilk) was the only protection available to Petunia. I called a friend, who looked up what the concern was for asthmatics. It was that the live, attenuated vaccine might induce an asthma attack. I have never had a true asthma attack, so I made the decision to neglect to mention my asthma to the workers distributing the vaccine. This worked out fine for me (but I'm not advocating that anyone else do this!) but I shouldn't have even had to make that call. The perfectly healthy people who are listening to talk show hosts rather than medical authorities about what vaccines are safe should have been told that they could have the FluMist or nothing at all.

This particular virus is worrying for certain groups, but it is nothing compared to what could come eventually. I hope we learn from our "trial run" on pandemic management, and do better next time- when the stakes may be much higher.

Yes, Virginia, There Are Scientists Who Are Mothers

After my last post on Female Science Professor's post on childless scientists, Dr. Isis wrote a post about her own effort to combine academic science and motherhood, and invited commenters to say why the did or did not have children.

So, of course, I've been thinking about this some more. Events have conspired to leave me with no chance of a decent (i.e., more than 20 minute) nap today (its a long story, involving the final H1N1 vaccination in my family, some of which I may tell in a post later tonight or tomorrow). But I do have time for a little blogging, so I'm going to write some more of my thoughts on combining motherhood and science down. Long time readers may remember that I've written on this topic before, as well.

The people who say they don't have kids have given three main types of reasons:

1. They don't like/want kids.
2. They think having kids is irresponsible due to environmental concerns.
3. They don't think they can combine their chosen career with kids.

I've got absolutely no argument with people in the first category. You should only have children if you want them, and I don't think there is anything wrong with not wanting them.

I disagree with the people in the second category, but that is a topic for another day. I'll just say that last week's Economist had an interesting lead article about population trends that would probsbly figure into any argument I might make on this topic.

I don't fault anyone in the third group, either- who am I to tell anyone else what challenges to undertake or what they can or cannot manage to do? However, I think some of the women in this group might be scared off from science and/or motherhood unnecessarily.

When I was in graduate school, I was deeply ambivalent about motherhood. I was dating someone who didn't want kids, and I didn't really know whether that mattered. I had heard how hard it was to have a career in science and have children, and I was concerned by what I had heard. There were few positive role models of women with children in my field. One night, I had a dream in which I learned that I was unable to have kids for some medical reason. In my dream, I felt relief.

Now here I am, 10 years later (has it really been 10 years????) and things look very different. I am married to the man who helped me pick up the pieces when that graduate school relationship fell apart. He wanted children, and so, I realized, did I. So, we had them. First, we enjoyed our SoCal lifestyle and a lot of international travel for several years. We both achieved a reasonable amount of success in our careers. But then, when I was 34, we decided it was time to get moving on the kids thing. Almost a year later, Pumpkin was born.

I won't pretend that it has been easy. As Dr. Isis notes in her post, it is exhausting. There have been many challenges along the way. I definitely want more sleep than I get. But here's the thing- I think motherhood is difficult and exhausting no matter what your job is. I know, in real life and online, mothers who stay at home, mothers who work part time outside the home, and mothers like me, who work fulltime outside the home. We're all exhausted.

I actually found staying home with a baby or a toddler to be much more tiring than my regular job- and no, I don't have some sort of easy, kick my feet up sort of job. Staying home with both a baby and a toddler is unbelievably exhausting, and so far, I've only done that with my husband at home, too. Caring for a child is hard work. I love the fact that some anthropologists are now arguing that we always relied on the wider community for help in doing this work.

I'm also a little confused by the people who say that having children will necessarily decrease the quality and/or quantity of any work you do. Do these people currently spend every waking hour working? I certainly didn't before I had kids. I had hobbies. I read, I baked, I played fiddle, I kayaked, I rollerbladed, I kickboxed, I did yoga, I hung out at our local pub with Hubby. We traveled a lot. Those were the things that having kids cut into. I still read and bake, but not as much. I look at my fiddle and think that some day soon, I'll get it out and play again. It took me almost a year after Pumpkin was born to really get back into my yoga practice. I'm sure I'll pick it up again, or maybe I'll get back into kickboxing. If Petunia sleeps better than Pumpkin, I might make it out to play fiddle before too long. The trips to the local pub have been replaced by Friday night beers at home, and I'm looking forward to starting those up again once Petunia's sleep patterns and nursing schedule allows it.

My work productivity hasn't dropped noticeably- at least not consistently. It goes down when we're sick or when sleep is particularly bad. But overall, I'm still getting stuff done and keeping my career on track. Sure, I'm not shooting for a big promotion or looking for the next big thing to do, but that's OK. That's not where I'm at in my life right now, and I'm not sure I'd be there even if I didn't have kids.

Now, I'm just one woman, in a slightly non-traditional science-related job. But there are others out there who are combining motherhood and a career in science. I'm going to make the rest of this post a running list of scientist who are also mothers. It will definitely not be complete, but I'll keep adding to it and I'll put a link to this post on my sidebar. Send me your suggestions for additions- including yourself. Let's use the power of the internet to make a community of role models for the women who are where I was in grad school: looking ahead to an uncertain future and hearing over and over again how what they want to do can't be done.

I decided it might be helpful to know the stage of career and high level field for the people on my list, so where I can easily find that, I'm including it. Let me know if I get anything wrong.

People with blogs:

Academic Scientists

• Blue Lab Coats (tenure track, biological science)
• Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde (postdoc, biological science)
  
• Female Science Professor (tenured, physical science)
• FIA (post-doc)
  
• On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess (tenure track, biological science)
• PhDMom (tenure track)
  
• Professor Chaos (tenure track, biological science)
• ScientistMother (graduate student, biological sciences)
  

Industry Scientists

• Me! (associate director/department head at a small to medium sized biotech)

There are lots of other scientists in industry who are mothers (most of the women over 30 at my company, for instance), I just haven't found any blogs yet.

Government Scientists

• Bad Mom, Good Mom (let me know if you should be in the industry category instead- I'm not sure)

People without blogs:

Academic Scientists

• Elizabeth Blackburn (tenured and a nobel laureate)
  
• Lise Eliot (academic, mother, AND author of two really cool books on child development)

I know there are many, many more out there- but it is time for me to end Pumpkin's nap (or I'll never get her down tonight), so I'll have to come back and do more later.

To Everything a Season

Petunia is refusing to take a pacifier. I've bought just about every type I can find, and so far I have gotten her to suck on only one of them (a Soothie) and she's done that exactly five times. I know that lots of kids never take pacifiers, and that it will be OK. Still, I miss having the all-powerful binky in my bag of baby soothing tricks! Instead, we do a lot of bouncing, to music. She seems to really like music.

Pumpkin, on the other hand, is still very attached to her binky. We are constantly pulling the binky out of her mouth and asking her to repeat herself so that we can understand her. We're in the midst of a long gradual process of getting her to give up her binky (Hubby is a little more gung ho on this than I am at this point).

The fact that I'm desperately trying to get one child to take a pacifier even while I'm trying to get the other one to give it up is an example of both the absurdities that come with parenting and the most valuable lesson I have learned as a mother: that everything is a phase. Some phases are more fun than others, but they all pass.

I was thinking about this today as I read the comments on Female Science Professor's post asking her childless readers why they have chosen not to have kids. I found the answers to be pretty depressing. I am not one of those parents who thinks everyone's life would be improved by having children. I love my kids, and I am very happy with my life, but I recognize that the decision to have kids involves a trade offs in your life, and that for some people, the things they would gain do not outweigh the things they would have to give up. I understand that some people think that the world doesn't need more people, even if I don't agree with their arguments. However, a large number of women posted that they didn't have kids because they didn't think they could combine motherhood with science. And that makes me sad, because for me, it has worked out just fine.

I don't know that much about life as an academic scientist. Perhaps it is a much more demanding career than that of an industry scientist. However, I have come across several blogs of women who do combine academic science and motherhood. These women seem reasonably happy and successful. I worry that the idea that you can't combine motherhood and a career in academic science has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is too bad for the women who are scared away from science, and too bad for science- many of these women are no doubt talented scientists who would ask interesting questions.

I also wonder about the idea that your life needs to follow a straight path, with a career that is always progressing to greater and greater things at its center. If you'd asked me in graduate school, that is probably the sort of life I would have imagined for myself. It is not, however, how I am experiencing my life now. I now see life as a series of phases. In some phases, my career has taken center stage, and I've focused most of my energies on it. In other phases, my career has chugged along at a steady state, but not really grown, and I've focused my energies elsewhere- travel and motherhood being the two things that spring to mind. Perhaps I am being naive, but I think that when (if?*) I want to focus more exclusively on my career again, I will be able to do so.** And even if I find that I have somehow taken an irreversible step to the side, and can't get back on a high growth track, I don't think I'll regret any of my decisions. My life is richer for having had these other phases in it.

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*I find that the aspect of my pre-baby life that I miss the most is not more hours to dedicate to my work, but the freedom to travel. So maybe I will never want to focus so much on my career again. Maybe I'll want to travel again! And that would be fine, too. I don't think a career has to be high growth to be meaningful.

**I realize that the realities of the tenure clock may make this attitude more difficult to have in academia, at least until tenure has been achieved.