Owl Babies - dealing with Mum being away.

The favourite book in our house right now is "Owl Babies", by Martin Waddell. We read this pretty much every night, and it never fails to produce smiles of delight in little one when the owl babies' mother flies home. It occurred to me while reading it last night that since this book is actually a great tool for helping children deal with time when their Mummy must travel for work I should share it here. (AstroMaman already posted one of the tools they use in their house when one parent has to be away in Counting Days.)

In the story the owl babies wake up to find their Mummy is gone. They think about where she's gone (probably out hunting to get them food) and they try to deal with their worries as they wait for her to come home (what if she got eaten by a fox). Just as they are giving up hope, in she flies (to the delight of both the owl babies and my little one). "What's all the fuss, you knew I'd come back" she says. The owl babies agree - and finish "I love my Mummy". At the moment we only have this as a library book, but I think I'll be buying it to keep soon.

Oh you're an Astronomer - that's interesting!

One of the things I love about being an Astronomer is that pretty much everyone is interested in what you do - this gives a real opening to educate about science, and frankly it's just fun to have a job everyone thinks is "cool".

One of the things I hate about being an Astronomer is that pretty much everyone is interested in what you do - this has led to some very sticky airplane/taxi ride conversations about why Einstein is wrong, or how my science education has closed my mind to alternative theories etc. etc. Also I'm a bit scared of the effect on hairdressers who I do still want to make me look nice - generally an area I try to stay away from when getting my haircut!

These kinds of conversations have come up a lot recently as I've just got back from a long trip - there's nothing like long airplane/taxi rides to stimulate conversation with strangers. I would say I had two of the first kind, and only one of the second, so that's not bad.

On the first long plane ride my neighbour was clearly dying to ask a question after he got out of me what I do. I managed to be unfriendly enough that he waited until almost the end of the flight (showing great tact on his behalf - I needed to get some work done and enjoy my "alone" time) and then we had a nice conversation about the Big Bang and how Physics can't explain things right back to it yet since we can't yet reconcile quantum mechanics and strong gravity. A risky area, but I think it went well. Also I broke some misconceptions by working on my latest crochet project during the flight - he seemed unreasonably impressed that astrophysics and crochet are not mutually exclusive.

The second conversation did not go so well. Probably didn't help that it happened right at the end of my journey when all I wanted to do was collapse in my hotel room. I had a taxi driver with probably the smallest amount of tact I've ever seen in a person (and that's saying a lot given how much time I spend with astronomers) who really wanted to educate me about how my science training has closed my mind to the fact that Einstein must be wrong about gravity. I don't actually remember much about the conversation - except that it left me wanting to remind myself what Einstein had to say about time dilation in gravitational fields and learn more about experiments on Earth which try to test this. His complaints has something to do with that and involved spouting equations to me at midnight local time while I struggled to stay awake.

Proving that not all taxi drivers are tactless was conversation number three. Also at the end of a long journey - but one in which I slept much more - and was on the way home to little one, already putting me in a much better mood. We had a nice conversation about how the size of the Milky Way makes it unlikely that aliens have actually visited Earth, even if they (in my opinion) are quite likely to exist somewhere. I think I managed to confuse him with my "oreo cookie", western Europe size comparison (if the solar system is an oreo cookie, the Milky Way is the size of western Europe - or North America if you prefer), but he seemed happy with the conversation and complemented me on my clear explanations. That taxi ride ended very amicably - and I learned that in his opinion I could sell electronics, and probably even "cheeky stuff" like extended warrentees (his other job was as a manager in an electronics store), so I'll think about that as an alternative career!

Counting days

Like everybody else in this business, Boyfriend and I have to travel a lot; conferences, workshops, seminars, observing runs... Within a reasonable limit, we have tried not to let the fact that we have a child change that too much. Of course I didn't travel in the first few months, and there's the occasional heartache of missing some important milestones that goes with this. But overall it's been going well. I think part of the key to that was to get Chatton used from the start that maman and papa were going to be away from home sometimes. He's never made a fuss about it, and actually behaves extra-nicely with the one parent that stays behind to take care of him!

But now that he's older, he started missing us more and more when we are gone. I'm surprised by this, I thought if there would have been problems, they would have come up when he was smaller. It's not really a problem, he's still mostly as happy as usual when one of us is gone, but he mentions often (especially at night) that he misses us.

So we have come up with a trick to help him with that. Whenever one of us travels for more than a couple of days, we take a large piece of paper and make a calendar for Chatton, with one blank box for every day that Boyfriend or I are gone from home. Then each morning he gets to draw a picture in that day's box. This way he sees clearly how much time has gone and how soon the missing parent is coming home. Since time is a vague concept for young children, we find that this helps him a lot to keep track of what is going on. He can see that there are still X days left, so he's not asking us and himself all the time "when is mummy/daddy coming back?". Being aware of what is going on seems to make him feel more secure about the whole thing. Of course there's also iChat or Skype to keep in touch, much better than just the phone for small kids.

I was just away for almost three weeks on a work trip (the longest either one of us has been away from home since Chatton was born), and though he obviously missed me, everything went very well. He even found an idea for an Astronomy-related thing to draw each day on his calendar, so I now have this really cool set of drawings for my office wall!

If anybody has other tricks or ideas of things to do to make being away from home easier on the little ones, please share!

What's in a Name?

One of the reasons I enjoy this blog (even if I don't post much) is that it has led me to find lots of other interesting women in science/science mother blogs. One of my recent favourites is Two Women Blogging. Reading it this morning I found this post Things I Could Do Without: Old Not-Quite-Friends Edition. Now I'll confess to being someone who likes sending Christmas cards, and I got an interesting insight in what that might to do other people from that post, but I like getting them, so I will continue to send them.... perhaps more selectively in the future though...

Anyway the thing which really resonated with me in that post was the comments about the labeling of mail. I also have not changed my name to match my husbands and remain confused at how hard this concept is to grasp for people. We have the added complication that the combination of our two names is vaguely obscene sounding, so it always amuses me when people decide to go for the hyphenation route! My favourite though is the Drs. HisName and MyName. I actually don't really care how I'm addressed, but I am amused at the variety people come up with!

All this is minor compared with state confusion over the names.... Once when travelling into the US there was a minor problem with my documentation and I was brought round to a back room to have it checked further. My new husband (a US citizen) was not allowed to accompany me as "we did not have the same family name". At the time this was a bit concerning, but not really a big deal. However we're travelling to the US this week and I do now have some questions about my status, so I would say it's 50-50 that this will happen again. I think I'll have to insist that husband and little one (at the end of 10+ hour flight) *will* come with me this time though.... Surely they can't be within their rights to separate a mother and child simply because we have different last names?

Why I like Cloth Diapers

I promised a post a while ago about why I like cloth diapers. So here goes...

1. I'm doing my bit for the environment.
OK so there's actually been some debate about this. There was a British study which suggested that using cloth might not actually be better for the environment than disposables which was widely cited as a reason not to feel bad about disposables. As I understand it, the argument went that the amount of water/energy needed to make a single disposable was about the same as it took to wash a single cloth diaper. Cloth diapering advocates around the world complain that the study wasn't fair - it made unreasonable assumptions about the washing habits of cloth using parents, had them tumble drying their diapers, using old fashioned terry toweling, and basically didn't survey enough of them to get a real answer... I still don't know what to make of the study. But I still think that using cloth has to be better for the environment than disposables. I'm happy that my daughter's disposable landfill pile is so much smaller than the average.

2. It saves money.
This is undeniable. There is a large initial outlay, but then you're pretty much set, especially if you get one-size/expandable versions. You can even use them for future children.

3. It's got to be more comfortable. Paper vs. cloth on your bottom. I rest my case.

4. Cloth diapers are cool. OK on this one maybe I'm a bit weird, but cloth diapers are pretty cool. The ones I like are one-size and have worked well since my daughter was 1 month old until now (22 months) which I think is a testament to great design. They come in lots of different colours, and just look better than disposables. In the summer little one can sleep just in a diaper and t-shirt and looks adorable. They use all sorts of super modern ultra-absorbent but quick drying cloth too. I just love the collision of an "old fashioned" method with new materials.

5. It's supposed to speed up potty training. The theory goes that because the cloth isn't quite as absorbent as a modern disposable the child feels more when they wee and so is potty trained sooner. Sounds good to me. :)

So why don't more people use cloth? I'm not really sure as you might guess, but here are some downsides I have found:

1. They're a bit bulky. Those tailored toddler jeans might not fit (why does a little girl toddler need tailored jeans though?). Sometimes I buy up a size in clothing.

2. You have to wash them and possibly assemble them. You can see by a previous post that sometimes this is a bit of work. More on that later. But we don't have to buy a stack of disposables every time we go to the supermarket, so we gain there... The kind we have need to have the absorbent bit taken out for washing, then stuffed back in. This is a bit tedious - but you can get versions which don't need this - and I generally do it in front of the TV.

3. Poop is scary. I would argue it shouldn't be for any parent, but I think some people just don't like the idea of dealing with poopy cloth diapers. We have flushable liners now we have a toddler which work well most of the time (breast milk poop is water soluble and can just be put in the wash with everything else). There are those occasional loose poops though which are a bit nasty, but I assume no worse than disposable blow outs.

4. You can't buy them in the supermarket. But you don't need to buy them all the time, so all the online stores actually work very well.

5. The initial cost is high. But you can slowly build up you stash of cloth diapers and use disposables to fill in between washes. Soon you will think disposables are a huge waste of money. :)

So here's my guide to cloth diapering. You can find a wealth of information on the internet so it's going to be brief.

1. Don't panic when you read about all the different kinds (prefolds, pockets, all-in-ones etc.) and all the acronyms (AIO, WAHM) and brand names. If you want things that work like disposables you want either pockets or all-in-ones. The difference is that pockets you stuff with the absorbent stuff (into a pocket!) so you can alter the bulkiness/absorbency, while all-in-ones have that done for you.

2. Start slow. Just buy a couple and see how you like them. It's OK to use a combination of cloth and disposable. We still do. I's also OK to have lots of different kinds of cloth. We mostly have one kind (BumGenius One-Sized) but that's just because when trying others I've never found one I like better.

3. Take a break if you get stressed out. It's OK to stop and start. Have a break when things seem too much, then go back to it. OK this kills some of the cost savings, but you still make out as long as you use them more than once or twice!

Ironically I'm writing this today with a daughter in disposables at daycare. Our washing machine broke. It took one diaper before it sank in and we realized that this meant we should stop with the cloth until it was fixed. Cloth diapering and doing washing at the launderette is a little too much for us! Hopefully the machine will get fixed tomorrow and we'll be back on track, but actually I'm thinking of taking a break over Christmas anyway what will all the travel and family visits. And the excitement of the week - little one pooped in her potty. So maybe we'll be starting to phase all this out soon anyway.

International Travel Part 2

As promised here is my second post about international travel and breast feeding (see Part 1).

This time I went a lot further - to Australia. That's basically a 24 hour trip from where I live, meaning I had to pump enroute. I planned to use the airport facilities during a connection at SFO, but it ended up being a rush to make the connection so instead I pumped in an airplane toilet.... On the way back I was able to use the facilities at SFO. They have a nursery which is available to pumping mothers so I used that. There were two wierd things about it though - the first was the big sign saying it was only for use by parents with children (leading to some odd looks from the family coming out as I went in), the other was that the door wasn't completely opaque (glass window with opaque strips). Anyway I put my back to the door and sat in a comfy chair in a room which wasn't a bathroom to pump. Not too bad! Thanks SFO.

One thing I didn't find out last time is that Medela does not recommend using power converters for international travel (something about putting two transformers in serial? I should know this having a Physics degree!) so what I did in the UK was technically wrong. Instead you should either buy a new Medela plug for the appropriate country, or use the battery pack. The positive things about this - you can pump anywhere (eg an airplane toilet) as you don't need an electrical supply. The negative - well it uses a lot of batteries. Although for my week away, pumping twice a day, I used only 1 set of 10 AA batteries, so not so bad.

Anyway I pumped enroute - leading to one big question.... Could I bring this milk in Australia? They have fairly strict customs rules, and I could not find any reference to breast milk except if your baby was with you. In the end it turned out to be fine. I declared it and had a funny moment with a customs officer who asked where it came from... me..?! What he meant was where did I pump it.., although I can't see why that matters. As in the UK, there was much confusion at this point as to why I would have breast milk but no baby - I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept...

The other question of course is if for the return can I go through airport security with breast milk in Australia? Turns out they have two kinds of security. For domestic travel all liquids are allowed, and in fact boarding at the small regional airport there was no security at all! For international travel they have similar liquid rules as the US, except that (like the UK) the exception for breast milk only applies if you are traveling with your baby... Lucky for me I saw some friends with a baby early on in my trip so I left them 2 days worth of milk, and the milk from the remaining 4 days was little enough to meet the regulations. So no problem....

Sadly all this travel is dwindling my milk supply. I pumped about half as much each time on this trip as I did in the UK. Of course the fact that I was working 12+ hours a day (night?), had to pump twice while observing in the control room with no privacy (at 3am I didn't expect any visitors, but that would be just my luck!), and the huge time difference/sleep deprivation probably didn't help. I'm home now for a while which is great.

(Little One's contribution to this blog - apart from making it take about 3 hours to write: "```````````", got to go - we're having one of "those" mornings.)

International Travel

I just got back from a short trip to Europe for a second interview for that "cool outreach" position I mentioned (this is following an interview last month via video conference). I'm aparantly now one of two candidates - so keep your fingers crossed. Anyway travelling internationally away from little one posed some interesting questions and I thought it might be helpful to post my findings here. I'm still nursing little one morning and night (and other times if she demands it - which she often does). I didn't want 3 days away from her to mess up this part of our relationship, and I didn't want to be uncomfortable from stopping breast feeding while away, so I wanted to pump. Since breast milk is so great for babies I also wanted to bring this milk back with me from Europe so little one could have the benefit.

Question 1. Do all countries have such nice helpful policies as the TSA about allowing breast feeding mothers to carry on milk when travelling without their baby.

Answer - NO! I called the security helpdesk at Heathrow airport to check their policy and was met with confusion that anyone would want to do this. Oddly I think in some ways this is a good thing. In Europe maternity leave policies are much more generous. It's common for working mothers to get a year home with their babies. So that means there are many fewer working mothers who are still breast feeding - so many fewer who travel away from their little ones and need to travel home with the breast milk they have pumped but without a baby. The help desk had to call me back with the answer - which was that their policy of allowing reasonable amounts of milk for babies only applies if the baby is travelling with you. I could have the usual ziplock bag with small containers and that was that. Turns out my Medela bottles are 2.7 oz in size, and 6 of them will fit in the standard 1 quart ziplock (this still works in the UK where the limits are 100 ml bottles and a 1 litre bag). In three days away I pumped 8 Medela containers worth, so I packed 2 with ice in my checked bag and brought the rest along with me. That worked fine. I still think that the rules should be changed to mirror the helpful TSA policy change of August 4th 2008 - and in my copius spare time I will write the Heathrow security people a letter suggesting that.

Question 2. Can I bring breast milk through US customs?

Answer - YES! This I thought would be a big problem, but it turns out that breast milk is exempt from the normal rules on transport of food as you can find out at the helpful FAQ section of the US Customs and Boarder Protection website. Great news, and not at all what I expected. Way to go USCBP!!

I have to go to Australia next month for an observing trip, so you will be getting part two of International Travel soon. Will the Ozzies be more breast feeding friendly than the Brits. We'll find out!

Oh, and as a little extra note - Medela Pumps don't have plugs you can use in Europe. Luckily I have a friend with a US-UK converter I could borrow and I found this out by reading the info on the plug and not trying it out and frying something!

Conference Time

Since little one was born I've been to 3 conferences and one meeting at my home institution. For each of the 3 conferences I travelled to my husband and the baby came along. The most recent conference we were able to get the university to pay for my husbands travel expenses as part of a program they have to help postdocs and young faculty with travel if they have small children. This was fantastic.

However I'm starting to think that there is almost no point in going to a conference if I bring little one along. I say almost no point, because of course I got the exposure of giving a talk each time which is a good thing. The other point of conferences though it is socialize with your peers at coffee and dinner. With little one along for the ride I have to dash around to feed her in the breaks, and at dinner. I could pump instead - which I did at the meeting at my home institution - but even then I'm dashing around in the breaks to have enough time to pump, and have no time to socialize. The solution - longer breaks to accomodate nursing mothers, and others who need more time for whatever reason - but of course meetings are almost always scheduled to bursting point, so I don't see that happening.

The most recent meeting was particularly bad as every session ran at least a few minutes over - to a maximum of 1 1/2 hours (no kidding) one morning. This time was made up by shortening the breaks, which most people seemed just fine with, but then all they had to do was grab a coffee/lunch and head back into the room. With little one around I really needed more time than that. I felt like I spent the whole meeting catching up with myself. It was not conducive to socializing, or really taking much in of all the really interesting talks. This was supposed to be a family friendly meeting too - and there was more than one "Astronomom" present (although I was the only one still nursing I think). In other respects the organizers were very accomodating to little one's needs, but I suspect that all I will remember from that meeting in years to come will be the terrible run overs in each session.

Interview Experiences

Well as I mentioned I had two interviews for faculty jobs this past month. I thought I would spend a little time describing how they went in terms of the logistics. FYI little one is now 11 months old, and I had not spent a single night away from her until the second of these trips.

Interview 1: big state school. My husband and little one came along for the ride.
Interview 2: small liberal arts college. I went alone - leaving little one at home with her dad for 48 hours.

Overall I would say (and I'm surprised about this) but leaving little one at home was the better idea. I nearly threw in the towel the day before leaving for the first interview. Packing for little one and myself while also wanting to work on my talk was almost too much for me. The travel was of course a lot more stressful, and while at the interview I had no time to relax or work at all in the evening as I was just having to deal with baby stuff (or in a dark hotel room, since little one was sleeping). I pretty much fell asleep as soon as she did every night. Going by myself I obviously missed little one, and I had to pump much more, and deal with traveling with breast milk (see my previous post), but I actually could work on my talk in the
evening and decompress from the interviews a little. The only real downside of this was the extra work before the trip to make sure there was enough stocked up breast milk to last 48 hours. I pumped an extra once or twice a day for a couple of weeks which really got old quick. Of course now we have a ton of extra milk in the freezer, so I will be able to wind down pumping a little earlier than I planned before.

So surprisingly my advice is to go alone even if it feels impossible to leave your baby. I really didn't feel ready to leave my little one - getting on the plane was a pretty hard, and I was very happy to come back. In the end it worked out for the best though, and I'm happy as I do not have to travel away from her again for a couple of months.

New Policies for Lighters, Electronics and Breast Milk

A recent addition to the TSA's now famous limitations on liquids you can bring through security is that nursing mother's can bring "reasonable" amounts of breast milk through security "whether or not their baby is travelling with them". This is obviously important to working mothers who wish to pump while on business travel and bring the milk back with them for their baby. All nursing mothers agree that breast milk is pretty much the equivalent of liquid gold, so the thought of checking it, or sending it through the mail is not a happy one... so kudos to those "lactavists" who managed to get the rule changed.

Now this TSA rule is pretty new - infact all the signs I ever see in airports state that "you must be travelling with your baby" to bring "baby milk" through security. Oddly this new rule was also published August 4th 2007 under the title "New Policies for Lighters, Electronics and Breast Milk". So I think you might agree that I was understandably nervous about trying out this new policy on my recent trip away from little one. I was away for almost exactly 48 hours so not including the pumping session in the airport (standing in a dubiously clean, stale smoke smelling familly bathroom - but that's another issue), I had about 40 ounces of breast milk to travel back with. I came prepared with a print-out of the new rule, and with plenty of time to "argue with the supervisor" if it came to that. I think you'll forgive me for assuming that the average TSA employee might not have taken the time to become familiar with this rule, and may not have come across this situation before.

Well I have to say that I vastly underestimated the TSA (or maybe I overestimated them). My cooler of breast milk passed through the X-ray with not a single comment. As instructed in the rules I declared that I was "travelling with expressed breast milk", but I'm not entirely convinced they heard me in the noisy airport. Perhaps this has to do with the two gentlemen ahead of me in the line with arabic writing on their passports and who clearly were not familiar with the usual TSA procedure (taking out their laptops, removing their shoes and jackets etc). The TSA employees at that security line gave me not a second glance.

I feel a little guilty, but I have to say that travel without little one was a real treat! Obviously I missed her, but I had time to myself on the plane to read and no "bouncing baby with a death wish" to hold onto. I got two uninterrupted night's sleep (well apart from worry about my interview) and changed no diapers. I guess I was ready for a break (well as much of a break as can be provided by a faculty interview trip).

PS. I'll post more about my two faculty interviews when I get the chance.