Hi Flore

Thanks for sharing your experience! It's amazing that you are through
your Ph.D. and only 26 years old - congratulations.

It feels very uncertain when you are pregnant or planning to have a
child as to how things will fall into place regarding your career and
work life. I assumed that things would be a certain way and found out
that they were totally different. For instance, I was really amazed
and surprised at how much I wanted to be home with my son as much as
possible especially at the beginning. I greatly underestimated the
power of the biological pull that a child has on its mother. That
said, I was also grateful
to have my work because it was and continues to be a very fulfilling
aspect of my life. Taking care of a little one is hard work and it's
a great "break" to be able to exercise your mind and immerse yourself
in science during work time.

My son is 19 months old and I am currently in my post-doc. I was
pregnant and had my son while I was still in graduate school and
managed to do all of my last minute lab work before he was born so
that all I had to do after he came was analyze data and write. I was
able to do this part-time with the aid of a great fellowship, a
supportive husband who co-parented and also worked part-time, and,
after my son turned 1, a great babysitter who helped us out 7
hours/week.

Now that I'm in a post-doc position, I still only come into work
part-time (I'm at the office 25 hours/week) and my husband co-parents
and we now have a sitter coming in 9 hours/week. The main thing I've
done is become extremely efficient and I've cut out most of the
extraneous stuff that takes up a lot of time (my email correspondence
is WAY down).

Once your baby comes, you will see what works for you and your
partner. I encourage you to be flexible, be willing to be open to the
experience, and, if it turns out to be what you need, then try hard to
carve out the time that you need to be fulfilled in your career.
Having a space at home that you can escape to in order to write really
helps especially if you are breastfeeding. Then you can be close, but
still have a space to work. It's important that you set aside the
time away from your baby so that you can really focus on the task of
writing your dissertation. That's where the supportive partner comes
in (or a good babysitter). Leaving your baby with a sitter is a lot
easier when you are just in the next room writing and can come attend
to things if you are needed. That may be a good way to start back to
working while still being close for your baby.

My dissertation advisors both have small children and spouses in
academia, so they were really supportive of me having a child. They
worried some (I think) about me finishing on time, but ultimately,
they really supported me working at home a lot and provided me with
great role models of how to incorporate academia and family. I had
trouble working during my first trimester because I was exhausted and
felt sick, so I worked at home and that was just fine. My current
post-doctoral mentor is also very very supportive and expecting his
first child in January. He is fine with me being at the office
part-time as long as I continue to be productive. These are the sorts
of situations that we need to encourage and that are hopefully
becoming the norm. Without this support, I don't think it would have
been possible to have a child and continue in academia.

We'll see how it works as I transition into the next phase of my
career after the post-doc.

Best to you Flore in your pregnancy and in this transition away from
being "just" a scientist to being a mom AND a scientist! It's a
delicate balancing act, but know that there are a lot of us out here
going through the same things. And that it IS very possible to be
fulfilled BOTH as a mom and as a scientist. Especially as we
encourage the continuation of supportive work environments and as we
continue to see more and more examples of successful scientists who
also are successful parents. I think we are very near a tipping point
and with women making up the majority of ecology graduate students, it
will just be more and more normal to see the needs of families taken
into account in the academic career path. At least that's my hopeful
perspective!

Best to everyone,
Carolyn

--- In scienceandfamilies@yahoogroups.com, "viard_cretat_flore"
<viard_cretat_flore@...> wrote:
>
> Hello everybody and especially Sara,
>
> I read your article in Frontiers in Ecology and Environment (and by
> the way discovered this group :) and found it very useful for young
> scientists and young mothers/fathers. When deciding to have a baby, it
> is extremely hard to know how you will able to continue to work while
> the baby will be here. Families are not always visible in the
> workplace and colleagues tend to avoid to say that they must leave
> their work early because of their children. Most of my colleagues also
> waited to have a permanent position to start to think to a family, so
> they had their first child around 35 years old. I am 26 years old (so
> will probably be the youngest mother in my lab), have finished my PhD
> this summer and I am pregnant (3 months). I will try to find a post
> doc starting 2-3 months after my baby will be born. I must say these
> three last months of pregnancy have been extremely hard considering
> my work (I am finishing my papers on my PhD). I could not at all work
> 8 hours a day, because I felt very tired, sick all the day and only
> could sleep a lot. I don't know at all how it will be when the baby
> will be here, but I feel it more secure since I read your opinion (the
> message is finally : yes, it is possible to be young scientist and
> having children, and other parents experience it).
>
> Do other mothers have experienced difficulties with their work during
> the pregnancy? How did you manage to continue, and how was it
> perceived by your supervisors and colleagues?
>
> Thanks
>
> Flore
>
>
>
> --- In scienceandfamilies@yahoogroups.com, "sescanga" <sescanga@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm a Ph.D. candidate and the mother of a 2 year old. I'm writing up
> > my dissertation while taking care of my son at home--with help from a
> > babysitter 3 mornings a week. It is very inspiring to read the
> > thoughts people have posted.
> >
> > I'm writing an article on the balance of career and family to be
> > submitted to Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment at the end of
> > the month. My article is based on feedback, obtained through
> > informal conversations and a score of answers to a formal survey,
> > from other ecologists at all stages of career. I finished my draft
> > yesterday and was perusing the literature to see what others had to
> > say about this topic, and found Carolyn's article (2007, Bulletin of
> > ESA), and then joined this group.
> >
> > The topics that are of most interest here (and in Carolyn's article)
> > are those that are also of most interest to the people who provided
> > feedback for my article. It seems as though a lot of these issues
> > are pretty universal, and don't have easy answers. In developing my
> > article, I was encouraged to see that both men and women shared a
> > keen interest in the topic.
> >
> > Members of this group might also be interested in the articles
> > Science has compiled on the topic:
> > http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issue
> > s/articles/2800/scientists_as_parents_feature_index/
> >
> > I'm planning to cite Carolyn's article in my article in the hopes
> > that we can perhaps use it as a second jumping off point for further
> > fruitful discussions in this group.
> >
> > Sara
> >
>