N.I.P/Tuck (and cover?)

I’m currently coasting towards the end of my breastfeeding relationship with my 14-month old, Tess. I only nurse her 4 times a day at this point, 3 of those sessions taking place before a nap or bedtime.

It’s really easy to nurse like this. Most of her calories come from food, breastmilk is just extra. I don’t have to stress about my supply or watch the clock to make sure she’s been fed every 2 hours, I don’t have to time how long she’s been nursing or wake her to feed her if she’s been asleep too long.

I also don’t ever need to nurse in public (affectionately known as NIP) anymore. I was never the most brazen nurser-in-public, but I’ve done it when I’ve needed to. I’ve nursed her in restaurants, on park benches, on friend’s couches at parties, and on airplanes.

Not once have I ever so much as had someone look at me in a funny way about feeding my baby in front of them.

This week some controversy has erupted in the “right to breastfeed” fight because of a seemingly innocent tweet to Delta Airlines.

A mother tweeted asking Delta’s policy on breastfeeding on a flight. Apparently her 10-week old baby neither took a bottle nor nursed under a covering, so she wanted to be sure she would be “allowed” to nurse him on her upcoming flight.

@deltaassist tweeted back informing her that she would not be permitted to breastfeed without a cover-up.

After a slight uproar, Delta clarified that the tweet was sent in error and their policy does in fact support breastfeeding in-flight.

There are passionate views from both sides of the aisle on this issue. Some people think breastfeeding should be a private moment between a mother and baby, others recognize that babies need to be fed and sometimes a mother and baby like to leave the house.

When I first heard of these tweets, my kneejerk reaction was that it was a hoax of some sort. I live in Atlanta and as a result, have flown Delta more times than I care to admit.

Since becoming a mother, I have flown on Delta 14 separate times (7 trips, there and back) with Tess. On EACH.AND.EVERY.ONE of those flights I have nursed my baby.

Why?

Well, first and foremost, because babies who are exclusively breastfed need to eat every 2 hours usually. Also, because babies love to nurse and they usually don’t cry while they are nursing. It keeps them happy and quiet. It’s the same reason some mothers gives toddlers cookies or an iPad during a flight. Suckling also helps with the pressure changes and ear pain. It’s basically magic.

Delta has always been nothing but supportive of my decision to breastfeed on their airplanes. In fact, they have actively encouraged it.

I was once waiting at the gate to board a Delta flight and was wearing Tess in a baby carrier. A Delta executive who was walking through Hartsfield-Jackson Airport came up to us to say hello. While making small talk, he (yes HE) made a point to tell me that I should definitely either nurse her or give her a pacifier upon take off and landing to help with the pressure changes and her ears. He offered this completely unprovoked, I didn’t even have to ask.

The flight crew are always super helpful and supportive and dote on Tess. They offer so much assistance and support to families on their airplanes. I consider Delta Airlines, about whom I had previously always had constant complaints, to be one of the most child, family, and breastfeeding-friendly businesses or organizations I have come into contact with.

Nursing on a Delta flight!

Oh! The horror!

All that skin!

How indecent!

One time, on a long flight to California, I happened to fall asleep myself while nursing Tess. I woke up to find that Andy and Tess had also dozed off. Tess unlatched when she fell asleep, had exchanged my nipple for her thumb, so I was actually sitting there, head back, mouth wide open, sound asleep with my entire bare boob just hanging out!  I was literally just sitting there flashing the entire plane. Even then no one said anything to me! I was actually super embarrassed about that one. I was surprised I didn't wake up with Mardi Gras beads. It was awkward, but hey, it happened. And everyone was cool about it.

I had a hard time believing this whole “tweet” controversy because of those experiences. Apparently it did happen, though. Delta has corrected their tweet error and clarified that they support a mother’s right to nurse on airplanes.

(Frankly, anyone who hates the sound of a baby crying should support a mother’s right to breastfeed on an airplane).

The truth is, I do actually understand (not support, but understand) those who are shocked by the idea of Nursing-in-Public (NIP).

How? Because I was once one of those people. I didn’t think women should just be whipping out their ta-tas in front of everyone. “They’re still boobs,” I’d think.

It wasn’t until I myself had a baby and experienced breastfeeding that I changed my view on the matter. 

It is so critical to nurse frequently during those first few months of breastfeeding. Not only does your baby need to eat, but you need to express milk often to make sure you keep making more milk.

Sure, they’re still boobs, but frankly you see a lot more boob on the beach than you do when a mother is nursing. Even a mother who is not making an effort to “be discreet.” The babies mouth is covering the nipple, the head blocks most of the boob, and the nurser is usually still wearing a shirt or dress or some kind of clothing. I have yet to see a woman strip before feeding her baby on an airplane, or anywhere else for that matter.

I realized that the uncomfortable-ness someone feels when they see someone nursing is just their own shit. Again, you literally see more skin in the window of a Victoria’s Secret. Breastfeeding just has an “ick” factor for some people.

           

We are told from a very young age that breasts exist solely for sexual satisfaction. Breasts are sexy, not functional, in our minds. We use cleavage to entice a potential sexual partner not to sustain life, right? The idea that breasts exist for more than for giving a guy a boner can be difficult to come to terms with.

But again… that’s your own shit and you need to just deal with it. You can’t expect every new mom to not feed her kid because you have your own shit.

Again, I didn’t get it until I was in the trenches of nursing. I never thought I’d NIP, then I realized that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t ever leave the house for 8 months. We don’t live in a time where we can just expect new moms to be locked up behind closed doors for the entirety of their lactation period.

The solution is simple, though. We need to NIP more. We need to NORMALIZE breastfeeding. Because I never saw new moms nursing in restaurants or airports, when I rarely did encounter it, it made me uncomfortable. It just wouldn’t even be a thing if we saw people do it more.

One of the first times I NIP’d was when Tess was about 4 months old. I walked in a breastcancer 5K with her. There were tens of thousands of people in Atlantic Station in Atlanta waiting for the race, and I knew I’d need to feed Tess before we started our walk. I miraculously found one of the few places to sit in this enormous mass of people, a bench where 2 other women were sitting. There was certainly room for me on the bench, but I was a little nervous about how awkward it might be to sit next to them and nurse. But, she needed it and I couldn’t nurse standing up, so to the bench it was.

After saying hello and asking if I could sit on the bench, I tried to turn away and “be discreet.” A few moments later the women stood up to walk away. I was afraid they saw what I was doing and felt weird about it, so were leaving in disgust.

To my great surprise, one woman looked at me as she was about to walk off and said, “Oh I didn’t realize what you were doing there!”

I replied apologetically, saying that I couldn’t find another place and was about to rattle off a bunch of excuses. Before I had a chance, she interrupted and said “No, no no! That’s great! Good for you!”

In a very heavy Caribbean accent, she told me that back home women nurse in public all the time. She said moms just whip ‘em out wherever, but in this country everyone was so prudish and crazy about it, she just doesn’t understand.

These two women commended me for what I was doing, told me to keep up the good work and went on their merry way.

After that I didn’t hesitate about “whipping ‘em out” whenever Tess needed a snack or a meal.

These women had no issues with seeing a woman NIP, because they grew up in a society where that was the norm.  When we encourage women to hide, cover up, be discreet, or worse, nurse in a bathroom, we are perpetuating the mentality that breastfeeding is not the norm.

Mothering is hard work. Breastfeeding is hard work. Why do we want to make it harder by shaming or hiding lactating women?

When we do this, we are disenfranchising women during a time in their life where they already feel vulnerable, isolated and anxious.

I had a lot of hesitation about NIP in the early days, and didn’t expect to do it much. When I eventually started, I was prepared to be accosted about my “indecency.” I’d always be equipped with a soliloquy about my right to nurse, I knew the law and was ready to quote it to anyone who challenged me.

I never once had the opportunity to do that. 

That gives me great hope. It gives me hope that there are public outcries when a business tells a woman she can’t nurse there. It gives me hope that those businesses usually correct the misunderstanding when that happens.

You want to shield your teenage son or 8-year-old boy from another woman feeding her baby? If so, you are only ensuring that he will then grow up to shame other women for feeding their babies. The best thing you can do for your son is to just not even make it a thing.

  

If you are someone who gets uncomfortable about the site of a woman breastfeeding, that’s fine – you are allowed to feel awkward all you want. But that new mom shouldn’t be the one to be made to feel unwelcome because you have your own shit to deal with. Just excuse yourself. If you’re on an airplane, ask to switch seats. Don’t put baby in the corner. You go!

Let’s just normalize it, people.

The Feminist Housewife Leans In to Life After Work So She Can Have it All?

Originally posted 4-8-13

Um, what?!

That title is a mishmash of all the titles of things I’ve been reading lately.  I don’t know if there are always this many articles, books, blog posts, etc pertaining to the “working mother/woman conundrum” or if I am just only paying attention to this kind of reading material for the first time. However, it seems to me that I’m being inundated with advice, opinion and statistics on women in the workplace everywhere I turn. Between this article, this book, this op-ed piece and this article I feel like my head is spinning.

In my blog post “Big News,” I revealed that I had quit my job so I could take an extended maternity leave.  I also mentioned that there was a job I might start this summer, but had some details to work out.  Well, I was all ready to take on that new job but a couple weeks back I learned that some aspects of the job (another post doc) were not what I thought they were going to be.  That discovery just got me thinking a lot about EVERYTHING in my life, and over-analyzing every detail as usual.  Why am I taking this job?  Is this how I want to be spending my days? What do I want for my future?

To answer some of these questions about my future, I had to start by thinking about my past.  For me, graduate school was… ug. A struggle, to say the least.  At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the unhappiest moments in my life happened during grad school. In 2004, I started my PhD research in a lab with people I loved and an advisor I admired and respected. I then discovered I hated what I was studying. I switched to a lab where I loved the research but I had a horrible relationship with my advisor who, frankly, abused me.  She moved that lab to another university (and there was a snowball’s chance in hell of me moving with her) so I essentially started my PhD over in my 5^th year with yet a 3rd advisor.  Then my brother died.  Those were just the most major events that happened between the ages of 22 and 28. 

Of course, I had some of my happiest days in grad school too.  I married the love of my life, adopted my two lovable pups and bought my first house. It clearly wasn’t all bad.  While my personal life couldn’t have been better, my professional life was mostly pathetic. 

In the end, however, I completed my dissertation in a great lab with a supportive advisor and can make everyone call me Dr. Jenkins now. But if I could go back, would I do it again?  I have thought about this a lot and honestly I think the answer is no.  Even having been a success in the end, it was all too little, too late and I think I could have been more successful and happier had I done a number of other things. 

Even during the best of times in my final PhD lab, I never loved what I was doing.  I liked the idea of what I was doing, but hated my day-to-day in the lab.  I like thinking about science, analyzing data, figuring out what it all means, writing about and discussing results but hate doing experiments.  I remember my last experiment in the lab, I was 8 months pregnant and even though it was a successful experiment and I got a lot of data, I literally ended the day in tears even knowing it would be my last experiment before my maternity leave. Why? Because it sucked! It was a major struggle to get those data, and I was miserable and hormonal. I’m good at what I do in the lab, and can practically do it with my eyes closed at this point, but I literally hate every minute of it.

In a lot of ways, I think I like the idea of being a professor and running a lab. Like I said, I love the thinking and the writing and the analyzing and the discussing – everything that happens after the data are collected. I just hate the doing.  Professors spend their time mostly thinking/writing/analyzing/discussing but very little of the “doing.”  At least, the more advanced professors don’t spend a lot of time at the bench collecting data.  But I would honestly be looking at about another 10 years before I’m at the point where my days are not consumed by experimentation.  I originally thought this job this summer might be a “fast track” to a professorship, but in all likelihood, that is not the case.  I just can’t face another 10 years of hating my day-to-day activities for the possibility of someday maybe getting a job that I might not hate. 

So I decided not to take the job.

It has been a whirlwind making this decision. In one way, it was an easy decision to make.  I can’t leave Tess to go do a job I hate when I don’t need the paycheck.  Period, end of discussion, no doubt about it.  It is hard enough for a new mom to return to work when she loves her job, let alone going to do a job that makes her miserable, that pays nothing and when she can afford not to. 

But in another way, it's the hardest decision I’ve ever made.  I have devoted 25 years of my life to my education that culminated in a degree that trained me to be a professor.  I have toiled for almost 9 years, 7 of which as a student, to get really good at something that I no longer plan to do.  I have more student loan debt than I would like to admit.  And now I’m going to walk away from that to watch Elmo and change diapers?  This seems equally as insane as leaving my baby to do a job I hate. Does this all come down to which decision is least crazy?

To try to help me make this decision, I read Lean In, the book by the COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg.  A lot of my fellow feminists out there are probably familiar with this book, even if you haven’t read it – it is everywhere right now. The author has been on everything from The View to The Daily Show.  There are articles and blogs galore about it. In fact, there are blog posts about the blog posts about the book. And EVERYONE has an opinion on it. She has been heralded as both a saint and a demon for her views on women in the workplace. 

For anyone unfamiliar with the book, the over-arching theme is that women comprise a very small minority of leaders at all levels of professionalism (public and private sector) and this needs to be remedied.  Sanderberg writes: “Women hold about 14% of executive officer positions, 17% of board seats and constitute 18% of our elected congressional officials.”  We also make 77 cents for every dollar men make doing the same job.  She discusses her theories on why this might be the case and presents advice on how women can, as she puts it, “lean in” to their career and become effective leaders.

Sandberg argues that girls are treated differently at an early age – from infancy even – and this leads to different behaviors and attitudes that eventually prevent them from becoming effective leaders.  Parents talk to girl babies differently than boy babies, apparently. When girls call out in class, they are scolded for breaking the rules, and teachers naturally interact with and call on boys more frequently than girls. Girl leaders are called “bossy,” which clearly carries a negative connotation. She writes about “stereotype threat,” which says that being made aware of a stereotype (like “girls suck at math”) becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Girls – and women – want to hide their accomplishments and successes because they do not want to appear boastful or be disliked.  Much of this I agree is endemic.

But from a personal perspective, I can’t say I necessarily agree that a lot of this applies to me and my decision to step away from my career. I was raised to be a feminist. A lot of people think the word itself, “feminist,” is an insult or dirty word. However, I was always proud to label myself as such.  At a young age, I never even considered the possibility that being a female could hold me back from anything. I pursued academic success and leadership opportunities fervently throughout school and was proud of my achievements.  Despite my family’s poor financial situation, I was able to go to prep school in Connecticut because I was awarded a “Leadership Scholarship.” I was “bossy” and proud of it.  I have heard stories from my mom about how I used to play house with the neighbor kid, and would make him be the one to stay home and take care of the kids while I went to work. 

When I was 13, I was fed up with the fact that our local ballpark had phenomenal facilities for the boy’s baseball teams but abysmal conditions for the girl’s softball teams.  Boys had state-of-the-art scoreboards and dugouts and professional uniforms. The girls played in t-shirts and had rusty fences demarking a “dugout” that contained benches that gave us splinters on our ass.  After years of complaint, I wrote a letter to the local newspaper to do something about it, and they even featured my story on the front page, including my photograph – in color!  I bet you didn’t know you were dealing with a minor celebrity here!

Despite being a born leader and a proud feminist, not to mention the fact that I went to Smith – the home of Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinhem – a bona fide breeding ground for feminists, I am loving being a stay at home mom right now.  For me, at least, my current choices have nothing to do with how I was treated as a child or preconceived notions about what a woman should be doing with her life and time.  Some days while I’m listening to music and dancing with Tess or when I’m outside in the sunshine reading to her and listening to her laugh I honestly shudder when I think, “I could be patch clamping right now.” (Patch clamp is the technique in the lab I use). 

Having said that, I won’t deny that societal norms affect girls and women in their behavior and choices.  Obviously they do.  But I’m just speaking to my own life and my own choices.  Despite my fervent pursuit of higher education, a successful career and failure to believe women were anything but equals to men, I want to be home raising my daughter right now and honestly believe no one else could do a better job.  I think I am doing what is best not only her but also for me.  My choice has nothing to do with societal norms or pressure from anyone other than myself.  In fact, the only pressure I feel is that I should be at work and not at home with Tess.  But shouldn’t feminism be about making the choice based on what you want for your life rather than let society dictate what you should be doing?

In addition to her theories about why women fail to lead, Sandberg also advices that in order to have a successful career, a woman has to have a supportive partner, who admires your ambition and does 50% of the work at home – which includes child-rearing, house-making and financial planning.  Well, on this front I think Andy could even compete with Sandberg’s super-husband – and win. 

Andy could not be more supportive of me in every respect.  He is more proud of even my smallest accomplishments than I could ever ask.  He is not above doing housework.  In fact, when I needed to step up my nursing to get my milk production back up, I found myself to be so exhausted I could do nothing but nurse for a couple of weeks.  He did everything around here – other than nurse. And honestly, if he could have figured out how to do that, he probably would have.  So, if the key to a successful work-life balance is marrying someone who can make that happen, I’ve already accomplished that and then some.

So, I’ve always been a proud feminist, who was never made to feel that women were anything but equal to men, and I have the necessary supportive partner - so what’s my excuse? Why am I not “leaning in?”

Sandberg holds herself up as a beacon of light to other working mothers. She declares that she leaves work at 5:30 to be home with her family “whenever she can.”  Of course, after her children go to sleep, she opens up her laptop and starts up again.  I’m sure she still works 12 hour+ days, just not 12 hours in a row.  She uses the fact that she tries to be home for dinner and tries to be at her kids’ soccer games as examples of how she sacrifices for her family, while still having a successful (the most successful) career.  But again, she tries to be home for dinner, but admits she isn’t every night.  Sandberg also barely took a maternity leave, she admits she was responding to emails the day after giving birth and continued to hold meetings at her home while she was nursing.  Also, for a year after her first child was born her husband lived in L.A. while she lived in San Francisco. Excuse me? What kind of life is that?! If these are the kinds of choices one has to make to have the kind of career Sheryl Sandberg has, then I don’t want it.  She might be much more of a family woman than your average female world power, but she lives a life I would never want. Not that I’m judging her – I wish I could be more like her! I just know that it’s not for me.  

So I guess that’s “my excuse” for not leaning in.  I am driven by my professional ambitions, yes, but they do not define me. Not at this point in my life at least, and not in the way that Sheryl Sandberg appears to be. 

Finally one thing she says that really speaks to me in grappling with all of this is found on a poster at the Facebook offices, apparently.  It reads:

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?           

This is an important question not just for a working mother or a woman leader but for anyone. The truth is, being a post-doc is the thing I would do out of being “afraid.” Afraid of going out on a limb and finding a career and a work life about which I am passionate.  It’s scary to me to be unemployed. To be called a “stay at home mom.” These are things I never saw in my future.  Doing this postdoc would be the “safe” choice.    But I want something more for myself.

I don’t want a job. I want a career that I love.  I want to love the place that I get up and leave my children for every day.  I know that is out there for me, I just have to find it.  So I am going to take some time to find that thing, and it just so happens that the timing is right for me to do that now.  I can stay home with Tess, enjoy her infancy, watch her grow and develop, successfully nurse her, while also decompressing from the previous 9 years of stress from working in the lab, and working on finding a career that speaks to me.  

I see this as a great choice and opportunity, but in Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes that even taking a temporary hiatus from work to start or raise a family is incredibly damaging to a woman’s career.  She says that taking just one year out of the workforce decreases a woman’s average annual earnings by 20%.  This is a pretty scary statistic for someone who is looking at taking a year out of the workforce. 

Although, she describes her own decision to quit her job with the federal government to move to the Silicon Valley to pursue a career in the technology industry.  She was unable to garner her dream tech job for an entire year.  Finally, she took a position with a small company called Google.  She helped build Google into the world power it is today and her work there led to her current position at Facebook.

I wonder if she realizes the paradox in reporting the 20% lost earnings for taking a year off work for family in light of her own decision to take a year off to find the perfect job.  It clearly paid off for her. What is the difference between what she did and what I am doing?  I’m just killing 2 birds with one stone – taking the year off to start my family while also finding the perfect job.  Hey, in my mind I’m even more efficient than Sheryl Sandberg!  I’m a multi-tasker.

The truth is, I’m just trying to live in the moment and think about what I want to be doing right now.  And there is no doubt about what the answer to that question is.  Of course, I wonder what I will think about this decision in 10 years.  Will I look back and think “I should have taken that job, it was a great opportunity and here I am with school-age kids who don’t need me anymore and no career.” Maybe, but I also don’t want to be Erin Callan who devoted her whole life to her career at Lehman Brothers, even sacrificing her marriage for it, then was left high and dry when the company collapsed. She now regrets never having had children while she struggles to conceive at nearly 50 years old. I might be a far cry from that extreme, but I also think I’m far more likely to regret missing these formative years with my daughter for a job that made me miserable than the decision I have made.

I want a career, I know that I do.  I want that for me and for Tess. I think it will be important for her to see her mom be successful and fulfilled in her life outside of the home.  But if I do work, I want her to see that part of my life as something that brings me pride and joy not anger and resentment.  I am taking the time to find that while having the added bonus of bonding with and raising my baby in the best way I can right now. While I sometimes question myself, ultimately… I couldn’t be happier right now. And that’s how I know I’ve made the right decision.  Perhaps, in a few months I’ll miss sitting at the bench toiling with an experiment. Until then, I’m perfectly fulfilled working on this little experiment called Tess.

My most successful experiment to date!

Big News

Originally posted 3-8-13

I’ve been neglecting my blogging duties.  Things have been crazy around here.  I haven’t been able to figure out how I used to get things done before my mom came to visit. She spoiled me.  On top of that, in the past few days Tess has suddenly decided she will only go to sleep if I’m holding her.  

"But mom, I sleep so well when you're holding me!"

But that is a whole blog post for another day.   There is something else that has been largely consuming me the past couple of weeks, and I’m finally ready to announce this major development in my life:

I quit my job.

It is so crazy to me to even write those words.  It hasn’t really set in yet that I’m not going back to my lab… I wonder when it will? Maybe I should go back in and re-create the scene from Half Baked and be all "F you, F you, F you, you're cool, F you... I'm out." 

For anyone who doesn’t know about my professional life (if anything about me can be described as “professional”), I am a postdoc at Emory.  I finished my PhD in neuroscience there just about 2 years ago, and have been continuing to work on some research I started in my final couple of years of grad school. The abridged version of what I study is the molecular mechanisms of memory formation.  Being a postdoc is quite possibly the most thankless job in the universe – you’re massively educated yet at the bottom of the academic heap, you work long hours battling impossible experiments that hardly ever work and are paid a pittance to do it.  People suffer through it in the hopes that it will lead to bigger and better things, a professorship, a job at Pfizer, the NIH or CDC. Something along those lines.  And while being a postdoc feels absolutely pathetic most of the time, I’ve actually really felt lucky to work where I did.  I had a boss that I admired and respected and colleagues who supported me and made me laugh.  

But as much as I love my colleagues, I love Tess more.

I brought Tess into work to meet everyone.

This was her reaction when I told her how much I'm paid.

I have honestly never been happier in my life.  Don’t get me wrong, some days are tough, but mostly its amazing.  I love this damn baby so much! And I love spending every waking minute hanging with her.  And now she’s starting to really learn things.. its phenomenal to witness. 

I could watch her do this for days.  DAYS!

I have never been more fulfilled by anything in my life.  Of course I would still be a dedicated mother if I went back to work, but I see how few hours Andy gets to spend with Tess because he works, and it makes my blood run cold to think about having the same schedule.  We put Tess to bed at 7, so if I got home by 5pm that’s only 2 hours before she goes to sleep!  MANY mothers do this and are happy and fulfilled, or put their babies to bed later - and I’m not trying to make a comment on anyone else’s life or decision – I am just simply saying that for me that isn’t going to work. Not right now at least.

Dad and Tess time on the weekends.

Dad teaches Tess all kinds of important things when they have weekends together.

Like Red Sox history.

And England rugby history.

She's such a good student!

Because I have all week with her, 

I am more than happy to turn her over to Dad on Saturday and watch this.

Having said that, this decision hasn’t come lightly.  It’s not so much that I love my day to day in the lab so much, in fact… most days I want to tear my hair out.  But I want a career for myself. I’ve worked VERY hard for my degrees and don’t want to take time off to have babies and be unable to re-enter the workforce.   I also have a paper I have been working on a LONG time that is SOOO close to being finished, and I was afraid if I left the lab now I would lose that authorship.  This could develop into a long discussion of scientific papers and how it all works, but in the interest of staying on topic I’ll just say that papers are the currency of what we do, and having your name first on the author list is the most valuable kind of currency. At this stage at least. I didn’t want to risk my work being turned over to someone else and my name bumped down the author list.

The truth is, those cheeks make me forget all about author lists.

For weeks now I have been in turmoil over this – what to do? Leave my full-time motherhood, something that has made me happier than anything else ever has in my entire life to go back to doing something that most days pushed me to the point of tears? Or walk away from a life that I have dedicated 8 years to building and possibly not be able to pick up where I left off?

"I can do it myself, Dad. Gawd!"

I finally talked about it with my boss, who is the most incredible boss anyone could ever ask for, and he was very supportive of me spending more time at home with Tess.  I am going to continue to work on my paper from home, at this point my experiments are done - I am only waiting on some data from my collaborators and writing it all up.  It should hopefully be ready to submit in the next few weeks and we will see what the reviewers have to say about it.  We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but for now it actually seems like everything is perfect.  I will be taking a hiatus from science, but I will (hopefully) still have a paper published this year so it shouldn’t tarnish my record too terribly. 

I’m also working on setting something up for this summer. I don’t have all the details worked out yet, and haven’t made any final decisions yet, so I will wait before saying anything more about it… but it sounds like it could be a good opportunity.   And while it will still be difficult to leave Tess at daycare this summer, at least I will get to spend 6 months at home with her.  Its also very possible that by the summer I will be sick of diapers and tummy time and will be desperate to not use my “baby voice” all day long.  Even if my baby voice is awesome.

Tummy time.

You get a bit of my awesome baby voice in this vid.

Enough can’t be said about this issue of motherhood and working. I have been incessantly reading articles and blogs about this very dilemma.  I doubt there is a single mother who doesn’t struggle with the decision one way or another (well, other than Marissa Mayer at Yahoo! apparently). Stay at home moms feel judged and discriminated against and so do working moms.  Everyone appears defensive about their decision.  It’s mostly understandable – there are a lot of judgmental assholes out there.  And the decision itself gets at the core of some heavy existential shit.  What is my worth as a person and a mom?  Do I love my kids enough?  Do I love myself enough?  Will I regret risking my career?  Will the daycare girl get to hear her first word and not me? 

I’ll admit, I’ve had to do some intense soul searching, and I’m not even close to being done.  I mean, I went to Smith College for Women for Christ’s sake!  My fellow alum Betty Freidan highlighted the widespread unhappiness of suburban housewives, and sparked the feminist movement with The Feminine Mystique and here I am, throwing away 29 years of education to change diapers and read Fox in Socks?!  Am I serious?!  

Fox in Socks is modern-day Shakespeare though, it has to be said.

Have you read it recently?! Its genius! 

Ultimately, my decision came down to what makes me happy right now. And being at home with Tess is making me happy.  It may seem irresponsible to just think only in the moment, to not think of my future and only how I feel and what I want today. But honestly, I have never done that. I have always done what I think I SHOULD do, what’s best, even as a kid I was focused on my future and my goals. It feels good to be selfish and to do what brings me joy. What’s more, I only get one shot at my first baby’s infancy and I want to fully immerse myself in it. I am in the luxurious position that we can make it work financially so I am taking advantage. And I have an opportunity to get back into the workforce this summer without any major setbacks to my career.  If eventually I decide I want to be a permanent stay at home mom, then I will do that.  But I’m doing what I need to right now, and am keeping my options open for the future. 

This. What I need.

I am incredibly happy with my decision and am so excited for this spring with my girl.  Let’s just hope she doesn’t expect me to hold her constantly until June… although once I do start leaving her at daycare I probably will wish I had.

Seriously. Could I leave this face?!

A Valentine's Day Tale

“Knock, knock, knock”

I am jolted out of a deep, drunken sleep by a loud banging on my Smith College dorm room door.

I stumbled out of bed, and after tripping over an empty suitcase in the middle of the floor in the dark room, I yanked open the door to find my professor and undergraduate research advisor, Mary, at my door with a panicked look on her face.

“What is going on!!!???”

shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!

It was the morning of November 8, 2003 and I was due to fly to New Orleans for the Society for Neuroscience meeting with my advisor and lab mates at the crack of dawn that morning.

I spent the previous night at Packard’s, my second home in college, with an old friend who was in town visiting. I had 1 (or 5?) too many, hadn’t packed for my trip, and then overslept.

I frantically started just throwing clothes from my floor into my empty suitcase and followed her out to her car. I don’t even know what I was packing, I just prayed the collection included some clean underwear and a toothbrush. Embarrassment doesn’t begin to describe how I felt in that moment.

We raced to the airport and just barely made our flight. Our luggage wasn’t so lucky. Not that it mattered much, God only knows what kind of wardrobe was following me to my first scientific conference.

Had we not made the flight, and thereby missed our trip to the Crescent City, it would have changed the entire course of the rest of my life.

I spent the rest of that day hungover, exhausted, and dirty (since a shower was most definitely out of the question that morning). It was mostly a blur.

The second night, on the other hand, was a different story…

I was at this Society for Neuroscience, or SfN, meeting to present some of the research that I had done in Mary’s lab. Some other Smith professors were also at the meeting with their students. My classmates, Eva, Stephanie, and I were trying to formulate a plan for dinner that night. Mary had dinner plans to which we weren’t nearly fancy enough to tag along, but Adam and Richard invited us along to dinner with them. 

Later, Adam told us he was meeting some old friends from London at a bar on Bourbon St and would we care to join him.

Do you really even have to ask three 21-year old college women if they want to go out drinking on Bourbon Street?

There we were, at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, on the sketchy end of Bourbon Street, when Adam mentioned that an old friend, Andy, would be joining us. 

“Oh no, here comes trouble…” warned Eva.

Eva had met Andy, an assistant professor at Emory University, at the SfN meeting the year before. He and Adam worked in the same lab in London years before. She immediately began relaying some pretty wild stories about this English professor down south.

I was excited.

“He sounds perfect,” I thought.

A short while later, the entire courtyard at LaFitte’s erupted upon the arrival of a man wearing a sleek black suit.

After briefly engaging his old friends, he turned to me, introduced himself, then asked if I’d care to wear his jacket.

What a line!

“Oh, yes, please!” I enthusiastically replied, before it dawned on me that we were in New Orleans, it was humid as hell, and I have an excessive sweating problem. A thick, wool suit coat was going to do wonders for my hair. Later, I’d learn he started his day drinking at the pub at 6am while watching a rugby world cup game. He probably wasn’t seeing well enough to notice my hair anyway.

Flirtation was the name of the game as the night progressed.  Butterflies, thunderbolts, the whole nine yards. We couldn’t keep our eyes – or hands – off each other. The fact that he was a University professor in Atlanta while I was a college kid from Massachusetts never entered my mind. OK, maybe it did, but if so, it only made it all the more exciting.

That fateful night.

November 9, 2003.

Finally, my advisor Mary and our lab mate Penny arrived from their fancy dinner. I walked over to the entrance to meet them, and upon seeing me, Mary asked who’s over-sized, men’s suit jacket I was wearing.

“Oh, this friend of Adam’s… Andy?”

At this point, I was still on Mary’s shit list for oversleeping and nearly causing her to miss her flight, so she promptly grabbed my cheeks in her hand, pulled me close and said one word:

“Don’t.”

“What???” I innocently replied, knowing damn well what she meant.

“Just don’t,” she said and walked in to get a drink.

Cheekily laughing to myself, I strutted back over to my “forbidden fruit” to ramp up my flirtation even more. At one point, I reached my hand into The Professor’s coat (that I was still wearing, by the way -  we aren't getting x-rated quite yet) and found his passport. I remember opening the passport, revealing his passport photo, and swooning over how cute he was. Who looks cute in a passport photo? No one.  But somehow, I distinctly remember thinking that he did.

My whiskey and cokes, and his Blackened Voodoo beers, were going down a bit too easily and before too long the group decided it was time to go out dancing.

We all stumbled down Bourbon Street to The Cat’s Meow, where karaoke was wrapping up and a DJ was pumping out some quality shit. It wasn’t long before The Professor and I were taking tequila shots.

When in Rome…

The next thing I knew, The Professor and I were bumping and grinding to the music, when Mary’s arm reached around my neck from behind, pulled me away, out of the club and down the street.

I felt like a schoolgirl being punished by the old school marm. The second time that week!

Fortunately, The Professor and I anticipated something like this happening, so in our tequila-haze, had devised a plan to meet back up if we were to be separated. 

Unfortunately, the tequila-haze may have been a bit too thick and I thought the plan was for us to meet up in my hotel lobby. The Professor thought we planned to meet back at The Cat’s Meow.

After Mary frog-marched me to my hotel room door, a room I was sharing with 3 other women who were all sound asleep, I went inside and stood silently for a few moments before creeping back out for my early morning hotel lobby assignation.

I sat in the lobby for what could have been 5 minutes but felt like an eternity before realizing I was being stood up.  I’d later learn that Andy sat in The Cat’s Meow until they closed.

I finally put my tail between my legs and snuck back up to the room to get a few hours of sleep. After all, my poster was the next day. Yikes.

The next afternoon, I presented my first scientific poster at a national meeting, and the entire time was just hoping that the guy I met the night before would show up.

He didn’t.

After presenting my poster, Adam told us The Professor had invited us all to this big costume party the neuroscientists from Emory were throwing in the Garden District.

I could hardly contain my excitement, but immediately thought, “A costume party? I don’t have a costume with me…”

Or did I?

In the haste of packing while my college professor stood over me, I happened to throw in a few random pieces I could use for a costume. My former roommate and BFF Caroline had studied in Paris the year before, and upon her return to Smith that fall, brought me back a béret. That somehow made it into my suitcase. Naturally, I dressed as a “French tart,” with my béret, bright red lipstick and a very revealing top I also bought in Paris when I went to visit her. I think all of these items making their way into my suitcase for that trip was fate.

I was all ready to work my magic with The Professor (who was transformed into The Phantom of The Opera for the night) when he showed up to meet us with another woman.

I would have been crushed… but I was feeling hot and she was old and gross.  “Fuck it,” I thought. If that’s what he wanted, he was welcome to it. I’m just gonna do me.

To this day, that party still goes down as one of the best I’ve ever been to in my life. I didn’t spend much time with The Professor, but there was a full top-shelf open bar, tuxedoed staff passing hors d’oeuvres, and a live band – who could be disappointed?! (Even if the new-found love of your life was two-timing you…)

The girls and I had an epic night at the party. As it ended, everyone was out front waiting for cabs. Stephanie and I jumped into a cab with a group of fine-looking young gentlemen, and off we raced, much to the dismay of our professors. They clearly thought we were destined to a fate worse than death, so they jumped into another taxi while yelling “follow that cab!”

Adam, Mary and Penny then proceeded to pub-crawl down Bourbon Street looking for Stephanie and me. They never found us, but I think they enjoyed trying.

The next day I woke up (in my own hotel room) with about 1,000 Mardi Gras beads around my neck and my 3^rd raging hangover that week.  My first decision of the day was to go on the wagon as soon as I got back to Smith (I didn’t).  Second, I decided I needed a horrible greasy lunch to cure my hangover (it didn’t).

That afternoon, I finally realized the only cure for what was ailing me was a little hair of the dog, so the girls and I went to meet Adam for some drinks.

The Professor was there. He assured me that the woman from the night before was just an old friend and he’d love to hang out that night.

Maybe it was the extreme dehydration from the humidity and excessive boozing. Maybe it was his British Accent. In any event, I was swooning. And bad. I agreed.

After a real New Orleans night, that included an obligatory trip to Pat O’Brien’s, I was head over heels.  The truth is, I knew it the moment we met. I called my mom the next day and left her a message that said, “Hi Mom! I just wanted to let you know I met the man I’m going to marry. See you soon!”

We certainly were getting cozy that night!

We exchanged numbers. Actually, I wrote my number in lipstick on the brim of a New Orleans baseball cap I gave him the night before. Nothing but class for me. We had no idea what to expect but all we knew was we couldn’t go without meeting again.

We spoke on the phone every day after I left.

My brother tried to assure me at Thanksgiving that The Professor was married with a family in Atlanta. My mom was finally convinced this wasn’t the case when he called me on Thanksgiving Day.

“He wouldn’t be able to call her if he had a wife and kids!” she told Ron.

Ron tried to convince us he was just hiding in the bathroom with his cell phone.

A few weeks later, The Professor had a trip to New York City planned. I took a Peter Pan bus for 5 hours in a snowstorm to go down and meet him there for a single night.

I would visit Atlanta whenever I had a break from school. The Professor would visit Northampton whenever he could. In fact, he even visited Smith as a guest seminar speaker the following spring.  Adam acquired a few grey hairs during that trip.

That spring I was also accepted into Emory University’s PhD program in neuroscience. That summer I moved in with The Professor in Atlanta and started school shortly after.

Four years later we were married. Four years after that I finished my PhD. We had our first child last year.

December 24, 2006

The night we got engaged.

October 26, 2007

Our wedding.

In this day and age with internet dating and everything from booty calls to breakups happening via text message, I think people can be bitter about the idea of love at first sight. Or maybe people have always been bitter about the idea of love at first sight. And the truth is, internet dating offers a far more realistic expectation of meeting a quality man or woman who shares similar interests (other than tequila body shots). 

Maybe love at first sight is a ludicrous expectation. And of course the way I feel about The Professor, my darling Andy Jenkins, today is deeper, richer and fuller than it was in that darkened bar on that humid night in New Orleans… but it was love at first sight. I knew as soon as we met he was something special. And so did he. The idea that a professor who lived 1,000 miles away from my college dorm could ever by my “boyfriend” was more than laughable. But when you know, you just know. It certainly could have ended badly, but I have always been one to wear my heart on my sleeve. Sure, I was young and trusting, maybe even foolish, but thank God I was because after over 10 years together I know no one could have made me so happy. He is my best friend and favorite person. I love every day with him.  He flew to Australia today for a 10 day work trip and I literally cried when I dropped him off at the airport! I shed tears. Many of them. I have been with this man over 10 years and I still can’t stomach the idea of being separated. We are so madly in love with each other, now more than ever.

And I still have yet to find his secret wife and kids.