Congratulations "AstroMaman"!

Congratulations to AstroMaman, who welcomed her second child recently. We wish her and her family all the best. Enjoy you new arrival, AstroMaman, and we hope that you'll share your experiences balancing astronomy and two little ones with us!

Thank Goodness for Nametags

I made my first attempt at balancing work and motherhood: with Little One at about 6 weeks of age, I attended part of a conference. The most complicated part was timing feedings and arranging childcare while I chaired a session late in the day, when Little One is fussiest.

I had it all worked out... I had found a quiet place to nurse at the conference site, and my sister was to bring Little One there so that I could nurse during the coffee break before the session I had to chair. That would give me about 2.5 hours before I had to feed next, enough time to chair the session.

The execution of the plan was not as smooth as it could have been, though: it turned out that Little One was quite hungry (ergo upset) just before I fed her, and in my rush I decided not to take off my blouse (nursing tank underneath), but just to unbutton it. Little One fed enthusiastically, and finished about 5 minutes before I had to chair the session... leaving a huge milk stain right down the front of my shirt at chest height. What to do?

Then I remembered my nametag, which was on a lanyard for this conference. I shortened the lanyard a bit, and it covered the stain perfectly. I was able to chair the session without revealing my wet blouse and Little One slept until I got back. So all is well that ends well.

I can honestly say that this is the first time that I have been thankful for nametags at conferences. I also learned to always take off my outer layer when nursing at a conference, or else to bring a change of clothes :)

Congratulations "AstronomyMommy"!

Just wanted to post congratulations to "AstronomyMommy" who I happen to know just had her baby - a little girl - on the due date I believe! I don't expect we'll be hearing much from AstronomyMommy for a little while, but once she gets settled in I look forward to reading her insights in the journey of motherhood. Welcome to "the club" AstronomyMommy!

Tables Turned

Today I had the mother/supervisor tables turned on me: at T-10 days (likely) from being a mother myself, one of my "highly qualified personnel" (HQPs; what our funding agency calls students, postdocs, staff hired through research grants) told me that she was having a baby in the fall. Fresh off figuring out maternity leave for myself, now I'm trying to work it out from the perspective of a supervisor...

I am fortunate to live in a country with very good maternity/parental leave laws, and am even luckier to have a permanent job that lets me take advantage of them without forgoing my salary. But HQPs don't have that luxury: so while I feel very strongly that my HQP should have a nice long leave like I will, I am also faced with the reality of my limited research budget. Could it be that she will be back to work before I will despite delivering 6 months later?

Surely I can work this out, or at least arrange it so that my HQP gets the most "bang for her buck" benefit-wise. I just hope that I can get the ball rolling before I need to take advantage of similar benefits myself!

Expecting

I hope that I am not breaking the rules by making my inaugural Astronomoms post before I am actually a mom, but with the university semester winding down here in Canada, the fact that motherhood is 3 weeks away is starting to sink in...

I have been an assistant professor at a small university for a little over a year now, and teaching still takes up all of my time during the semester: with Junior on the way to boot, I have been very focussed on just making it through. Now that it's winding down, I have some room to breathe... and stare at the huge list of things to do before the big day. I can't help but focus on the work-related list: there are those 4 projects that I figured I could finish (or at least get under control). There is my graduate student, who will need to function independently for the few weeks/months before his first conference appearances. There are the proposals to referee, the thesis to read, and that research money to spend, too...

But in the back of my mind I have this nagging, unnerving feeling that for the first time since entering graduate school, none of the things on my work-related list are going to matter for a long time after the baby is born. I can't fathom what that will be like. I also can't fathom how I'm going to make it all work in the busy, exhausting post-delivery world that I'm about to enter. My comfort at the moment is that women everywhere make careers and motherhood work somehow, and that hopefully I'm no different. In the meantime, I'll start slogging though my to-do list and enjoy uninterrupted nights of sleep...

AstronomyMommy

We're about to welcome a new contributor to Astronomoms, "AstronomyMommy". She's not quite a Mommy yet, but will be soon, and I know she'll be a great one! She's going to be quite busy in the next few weeks and months, so I expect she'll be an infrequent contributor at first, but I hope she'll add a fresh perspective to the blog. Unlike AstroMaman and I, AstronomyMommy isn't a postdoc. She's a young faculty member at a small institution. Hopefully that will add a different twist to the challenges of juggling Motherhood and being an astronomer - less about the ongoing uncertainty and job search, and more about the unrelenting rounds of committee meetings, teaching, etc. that fill the days of a young faculty member.

I'll leave it up to AstronomyMommy to introduce herself further.