Elementary Parenting

A nice post over at the AAS Women in Astronomy Blog by Hannah discussing how much easier parenting is when your kids are elementary school aged: "Elementary Parenting".

This is nice to hear. My oldest will start school in September, and while we'll have a little one in the house for quite some time to come (since the youngest is still just 10 months old), it's nice to know an easier life may be around the corner.

To be honest from this side though school looks more complicated than preschool: we'll have to get her there on time every day. We'll need to sort out after school care, and something different for all the many holidays. I'm sure we'll sort it out, and this might just be fear of the unknown, but it certainly looks more complicated. And I don't think the cost savings will be huge (from the UK) since we get quite a big subsidy for the over 3s already (15 hours free care during the school year). For us it was that transition which made a big difference to our pockets.

Two is hard

Well it's been a long time, and I hate blogs that are just lists of excuses, but I have to say two kids is hard... much harder than one! I'm also loosing interest in anonymous blogging - I find it actually reduces what I can say as I don't want to give too much away. And every (female) astronomer I've met knows who I am anyway so it seems a bit pointless! So I'm not sure where this blog is going in the future, if anywhere......

Anyway enough of that, here's a update:

First the good news - after a wonderful 6 months maternity leave I'm back at work and getting busy with several exciting projects. I can confirm (anecdotally) the increase in productivity pregnant women have second time round - I have 4 (first author) papers published in the last year. I won another grant for 2 more years funding, so I got a promotion and a payrise (still a postdoc, but now a better paid one!). All this makes things look a whole lot rosier.

More good news - despite a slightly bumpy ride, and the annoyance that the new baby can't go to the same nursery as my older daughter the childcare situation is pretty good. The baby is within walking distance, so instead of the mammoth pumping I did for my first baby I just wander over there at lunchtime to nurse. I have been able to get away with no trips away from him yet (and he's 10 months old) with the help of my wonderful husband and parents who have come with me and the baby on a couple of trips I couldn't get out of. Oh and my new grant allows me to claim childcare for conferences, so we have a couple of big trips planned bringing both kids with us (last year for that before my daughter starts school in September - how time flies!).

And the bad you probably know. Funding for astronomy is decreasing or flat. No-one has jobs. I have two years, but my husband's postdoc officially ends this summer. I've been a postdoc for 5 1/2 years so the clock is ticking pretty loudly on my career. Yada yada. The only advice is to try to wait it out - funny thing is it just seems to keep getting worse.....

So the only solution is good research. With that I'v got to get on with work. An exciting paper in the draft phase - my favourite part of research. :)

Oh and Merry Christmas!

Childcare!

I'm happy to report that things have suddenly taken a turn for the better: we have found some childcare for Baby!

It was a slightly bumpy road to get there. Since nurseries are practically non existent here, which makes the few of them completely overbooked, we really had only two options (1) hire a nanny at home, (2) bring the baby to a "family nursery" (i.e. a woman who takes care of 2-4 kids in her own home). Option (1) was good because it is very convenient, and you get a say in the person you hire, but it's insanely expensive. Option (2) is much more within our budget, but it's the luck of the draw. We had found a person we could have hired as a nanny, and after much work we were offered a place in a family nursery, but we were not comfortable at all with the place or the woman (no specific reason, just gut feeling). So it was between the option we didn't like but could afford, or the option we liked but that would have sucked my entire salary. Talk about a choice... I think this is an example of a situation where the expression "catch 22" applies!

But then we lucked out. A new family nursery opened, a wonderful woman who decided to retire early to take care of children instead. We met with her, and immediately knew that this was exactly what we needed, it feels like she will be the cool young grandma that the kids don't have because we live so far from family. Baby started there right away, and we're now working on the transition. Because it took so long to find childcare, she is now old enough to have separation anxiety, to we have to take our time easing her in.

This means that in no time I'll be back at work full time, while feeling great that the kids are well taken care of. That feeling is priceless, I realize I had it at my previous job, without knowing it until we were put in this uncomfortable situation.

So last week I had my first full day in the office, uninterrupted, without Baby. It felt great. And that day I had a breakthrough with my research, nothing that will make the headlines, but I managed to do something I had been struggling with for a long time. That made for an absolutely wonderful day. Things are really looking up!

6 months later...

Signing back in after a while. Since I last wrote in June, Nr.2 was born, we moved to another country, and I started a new job. Hopefully this will be enough to forgive my silence on this blog!

Let's go back to last June where I left this off. I was getting a lot of work done at the end of my pregnancy, which was making me very happy. Then of course something had to go wrong: my computer died, which virtually put me on maternity leave earlier that I had thought. There were some difficulties with getting the computer fixed, and I only got it back a few days before my due date (I had a "baby or computer first" bet going on!), at which point I was a bit too tired and anxious to do any real work. Then the birth went well - I was again lucky enough to be able to have a totally natural delivery, which means the recovery was quick. Fantastic baby, very awake during the day, good sleeper at night, couldn't ask for more. Big brother wonderful with little sister.

The summer went well, but flew right by too quickly. I will hopefully have time in the coming weeks to write more about my maternity leave, and about how the fears I described in an earlier post proved to be mostly unfounded. I was able to take a good break from work, which was a life saver since we did have to prepare at the same time to move abroad to start postdoc nr.2.

Said move went as good as can be, I guess, considering the inevitable problems with moving to another country with two young kids. Maternity leave lasted 16 weeks, so I went straight to the new job when Baby was 3.5 months old. Boyfriend and I had an agreement with our bosses that we could work half of the time from home until Baby was 6 months old, at which point she was supposed to get into daycare. That went pretty well, she was such an easy baby that we could actually get some work done with her around.

And then the problems started. That will be another post in itself, because there is a lot to say about living in a country where women are expected to stay at home with their kids, so childcare is almost impossible to find. The daycare spot we were promised long ago for Baby was refused to us in the end, so we still don't have any help of any kind with her. Our bosses are wonderfully supportive, but we are both nonetheless starting to feel frustrated not to be able to work more.

We have come to realize that we were living in a kind of bubble - the past 2 years were wonderful; Nr.1 had a great daycare and was thriving, we had good jobs, lived in a really nice place, and still had time to relax, travel, do activities... There were of course ups and downs, but mostly I wasn't finding that combining work and motherhood was especially difficult. The reality hit us in the face suddenly, like waking up after a good dream. I don't know if it's having 2 kids instead of 1, living in a place that is slowly changing but where the system still mostly does not support the working mothers, or if it's because our responsibilities at work are ever greater and the pressure increasing toward landing some real jobs soon. Whatever it is, it's definitely a whole new game now.

But I don't want to sound too dark - all in all, we are still very happy. Baby is still the most wonderful, easy little thing, and my heart melts when I see how she and her big brother are already so fond of each other. Work is extremely stimulating (just wish I had more time for it!), very happy about it. Everything just takes more effort. And there definitely isn't that much time left for anything other that taking care of kids and working... hopefully there will be at least a little bit for blogging!

Stomach Flu and a Well Deserved Break (not at the same time!)

Well it's been an exciting couple of weeks in the "Astronomum" household. Little one got an unprecedented 12 1/2 days off daycare! It started with some vomiting - resulting in the classic 48 hour ban from the nursery. Little one clearly was sick, although not seriously, so I decided that we'd just make the most of it, and we actually had a lovely day out visiting our city sponsored bunnies (still makes me smile!).

This "ban" of course ended on a Friday afternoon - the weekend before a (completely planned) week long break in another city. Little one and I hung out together (and some of the time with her grandparents) while my husband attended a scientific conference. It was a truly lovely break, and I enjoyed spending a lot of time with little one and seeing all the funny things she gets up to.

Now it's back to work, and serious paper writing. Unfortunately I have to be on the job market for serious yet again this year and I need to deal with my "poor" publication record (instead of griping about it). So I really shouldn't be sitting her writing this!

Laundry and Lunchtime

Today I'm going to post (well complain) about the two motherhood related jobs that I am finding the most wearing at the moment. Motherhood, when I'm feeling most down on it, sometimes seems just like a string of not too difficult, but repetitive tasks. I once had a job working in a planetarium for the summer. The summer show was mostly automated - I introduced it, hit go, and pointed out a few stars at some point - that was it. I did a lot of mental arithmetic as I sat in the dark watching that show, and a calculated I saw it about 400 times over the course of a few months.... "Discover Mars" (said in deep, male, movie announcement voice... aargh!). I also couldn't tell you how many times I stood in front of a large sign saying when the next show was to be asked when the next show was, nor how many times I directed people to the bathroom.... Anyway I digress. The point is I'm not always super patient, and repetitive tasks do wear on me a lot.

Also to put you in mind of my mood this morning, I'm sitting her all damp and cold as I got soaked walking to work. Not a great Monday morning.

Anyway, little one now goes to daycare 5 days a week (instead of 4 before - we used to split Fridays, but can no longer manage that after the move). Her daycare does not provide lunch, so every day I must make her a lunch. I used to do this before, but only 3 days a week as her old place had "pizza Thursday" and somehow the switch to 5 days from 3 is really wearing.... I make lunch the night before (there's just not enough time for me to do this in the morning), and I particularly object to making lunch on Sunday night - it's just not fair for the week to infringe on Sundays that way... I wish I was better at thinking up quick healthy lunch meals that little one would eat. Sometimes I worry she's going to turn into tomato pasta with cheese!

My least favourite job number 2 is laundry. We're lucky to now have a washer in our kitchen instead of the basement, which I thought would really improve things, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I think for 4 reasons....

1. I had an excuse not to laundry when it was in the basement. When I was pregnant I physically couldn't fit down the back stairs carrying a laundry basket (fun fun), so I did very little laundry then, and then when little one came she "objected" to me going downstairs, so I got out of it that way. So my husband used to deal with most of the laundry... now I have no excuse.

2. The new washer is smaller - so that makes for more loads, and also takes longer. It's a washer/dryer in one, and the dryer is really slow... so it feels like the washer is always on.

3. Actually the noise really bothers me too - it's right in the house, so you can always hear it when it's one. The spin cycle in particular is really loud.

4. Cloth nappies/diapers. I have a post in my head which I plan to share with you soon, since maybe you'll all just think I'm making work for myself here, but I actually like using cloth for many reasons. Little one's old daycare however weren't keen, so we used to use disposables during the week. The new place is fine with cloth which is great for many reasons, but creates more washing - it's probably 1-2 extra loads a week of nappies/diapers. We're still very much adjusting to this new routine.

So big surprise you might say - motherhood is a lot of work. It's also of course very rewarding (necessary caveat for blog posting!). I guess the stress of the past few weeks (months) is catching up on me a little - so I'm sorry if I'm coming over a bit negative today. Anyway I'd love some tips on how to make laundry not such a big deal, and how to make lunch making more fun and easy.

Well that went well!

We made it across the atlantic and I'm currently sitting in my new office with a view. Last week however was a great reminder of the perils of trying to juggle motherhood and work. Little one (now 19 months!) started her new daycare on Monday even though my new job didn't start until Wed (October 1st). I had end of September deadlines to meet, and we thought we could also use the extra time to get sorted. It seemed like a great plan.

On Monday I met all my deadlines. On Tuesday we got a lot done towards sorting out the new house. On Wednesday morning about 1am little one vomited everywhere, presumably having picked up a new strain of tummy bug at her new daycare. Her new daycare has a 48 hour rule (no attendance for 48 hours since the last vomit), so this ruled out daycare on Wednesday and Thursday (our first two days at work). To be honest she really was too ill for daycare anyway. We juggled staying home and work for two days, by which time my husband also had the bug. Friday I tried to take her to daycare so husband could stay home sick and I could have just a little time at work, but they sent her home - my husband managed to make it out to pick her up, but by lunchtime on Friday I gave up, and returned home to find them both asleep on the living room floor (we haven't got a couch yet).

What a week. We had the weekend to recover, and now everyone is at work/daycare. Thank goodness I didn't get sick too. And thank goodness for supportive bosses. No-one batted an eyelid at me taking off so much time in my first few days at work. This assumption that I will get the work done at some point - that it doesn't necessarily have to be in office hours really is useful sometimes.

I miss pumping!

Little one is now almost 13 months old. Soon she will move to the toddler room at daycare where they will not deal with baby bottles. So a couple of weeks ago we dropped one of the bottles of breast milk at daycare and replaced it with a sippy cup of whole milk. She has been doing great with this, and since we have a reasonably large stash of frozen breast milk at home after my trip in January I have stopped pumping at work. Once the frozen milk runs out little one will get only whole milk at daycare ready for her move into the "big kids" room. I plan to continue to breast feed her while we're together for as long as is mutually desirable (as per the AAP recommendation), and I can't see either of us wanting to loose the evening snuggle time any time soon.

I always thought I would be delighted to stop pumping at work. Well here's the unexpected thing - after all my earlier whining about the time pumping takes out of my day, now that I have stopped I miss the breaks. Twice a day I had an excuse to go to our fancy new lactation room and read parenting magazines or listen to music. OK - I could take this break without actually pumping, but I never do. There always seems to be something more pressing (even if it's just reading the news online).

I guess I'm also a little sad about the end of this era in little one's life. I keep having to remind myself that she still gets a lot of breast milk in the evening, at night and in the morning. I feel funny about using up the frozen milk I worked so hard to build up and which I have been so protective of. I worry that an unexpected trip will come up and little one will need that milk, but of course she would be just fine on only whole milk and many babies are totally weaned at this age.

I have a toddler

Well I got one wish - little one walked for the first time at home on Friday night. Now I can enjoy her walking, and how good they are at getting her to do it at daycare. When I picked her up yesterday she happily walked back and forth a few steps between me and her favourite teacher. To top it all off her first tooth finally broke through. It was a big weekend.

I finally cracked and got in touch with some people about the job searches. Unfortunately none of it is good news. I've known for a while now that "big state school" had offered the position to someone else. I wasn't really sure that was where I wanted to be anyway so I'm sure that's for the best. Unfortunately "small liberal arts school" has now also made an offer, although they are saying my application is still active so if #1 turns them down I might be in with a chance. I think it's fairly unlikely though.

Proposals and biting

I was interupted at work today 1 hour from the deadline for an important proposal to find out that little one was bitten at daycare! Probably old news to experienced parents, but a new one for me (my daughter is 7 months). Kind of put the proposal in perspective, but since little one was pretty much fine and had gone to sleep I finished it up before going to "rescue" her. Indeed she has bite marks on her arm. And a lesson to me - I can't leave anything to the last minute anymore.