(no subject)

[rivka]

Today I went to work.

I still have two more weeks of maternity leave, and two more weeks before our childcare provider starts work. But the statistician for our big NIH grant is in town today through Friday, and there was no way in the world I was willing to let my boss handle those meetings by herself. They're all about the tiny little details of data collection and analysis, and Lydia is the anti-detail person. She's good at the big picture and the theory. I'm good at organization, execution, analysis - the reality.

Michael stayed home with Alex today. I put on clothes which would not hide spit-up, and a plastic tag with my picture on it, and I took the bus into my office for the first time in three months. It felt very strange.

We had the meetings at a house Lydia owns, a block from the Institute. I submerged myself in our data, all the tiny details of subject recruitment and data coding and potential missing values and possible future analyses. I discussed minutiae of Excel and SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences.) I exercised mental muscles which I haven't used in months - although I have fielded occasional calls from research assistants and from my boss, during my leave.

I was good at it.

I didn't start being overpowered by thoughts of Alex until the bus ride home. When I came into the house I was so glad to see her, and especially to touch her. I held her in my arms and felt the warm solid heaviness of her body, and buried my nose in the sweet smell of her baby hair, and stroked her arms and legs. She grinned at me with her full-body grin, the one where she hunches her shoulders and draws her arms and legs in and turns her head aside, as if to say that she's so happy with what she's seeing that she can't even stand to look at it anymore.

Tomorrow and Friday I'll be taking her to work with me, because Michael only takes one day off per week. That should be fun. At least we're meeting at Lydia's house, and I won't be trying to do all-day baby care in a conference room at the Institute.

Comments

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

bless your heart, children thrive amongst the worst circumstances you can imagine.

It still feels creepy to let them have a life you're not in all the time, but it's how most of the world gets by.

I picture you as a spectacular mom.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I feel fine about going back to work. Looking forward to it, actually. Michael does a great job with the baby and I trust the childcare provider we'll have for the other two days a week I'll be out of the house. I just missed her.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

yeah, that part sucks.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

You're going back 60%, or will you be working from home the other two days? Just curious. I'll be going back 20% after six months (from home) and 60% after 8 months, with baby in nursery.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'll be working from home, technically, although I suspect that really what I'll do is be a lot more efficient when I'm actually in the office (not so much reading LJ) and put in a few hours in the evening and on weekends. I have no illusions that I can put in a full day of work while I'm home with the baby.

[eeyorerin]

I wish baby-hair smell could be bottled. It's such a *nice* smell.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Until the start eating food and smearing it in their hair. Applesauce mixed with yogurt and smushed peas = not nice.

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

Baby's First Mousse!

Oooh! Pretty!

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

spss! woo!

er, my dad is a stats geek and is the spss go-to guy at the university that he and i both work at. so i grew up hearing about it.

[lcohen]

i used to hear about it when i worked at NORC, back in the dark ages.

[windsea.livejournal.com]

Yay for loving work! Yay for loving baby! Yay for combining both!

(Says the woman who vividly remembers lying on her stomach on a quilt in the backyard, editing galley proofs of a major research institute's biennial review, with her 6 months old son happily kicking at dangling things over the next quilt :-) )

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Ah, SPSS, that takes me back.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

I hear you - stats and data collection are SO vitally important it's unreal.

I'm curious though: you managed to field calls from your boss and RAs during your maternity leave? Did you lay down some boundaries, such as "don't expect me to answer e-mails asap" or "don't expect me to rush to the phone"? Did you do anything more than field questions?

I'm asking because I'll need to establish those boundaries for myself soon. I'm a researcher like you, working in speech technology. While I'm on maternity leave, a large grant is likely to start, and another grant I've been working on over the last couple of months will be submitted.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I told them that I would not promise to answer the phone, but they could leave me voicemails and I would return them when I could. I also reviewed with my RAs the things I expected them to handle themselves, the things they should take to my boss (the Principal Investigator), and the things they should call me about - which were mostly questions of research protocol, or interpersonal troubles. The RAs have been very respectful of my leave and have only called me about things that I agree were important. My boss started out that way, but in the last couple of weeks she's been calling me about every damn little thing.

I didn't want to be bothered on my leave, but I also really didn't want to come back and find that things weren't being done correctly, or that the RAs were on the verge of quitting, or that good relations I worked hard to establish had fallen apart.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

My boss started out that way, but in the last couple of weeks she's been calling me about every damn little thing.
I hear your frustration.

It says a lot about your people management skills that your RAs have been able to cope so well - and about your time management skills that you've been able to deal with your boss!

I will probably tell people that I'll check my e-mail regularly, but won't promise responses. I have also warned people that I won't be up for writing or co-writing any papers until further notice. Because I'll be inbetween research contracts, I won't have an office to work from, anyway (we're redecorating atm, and one of the rooms will be set up as some sort of office space). Of course, there's always wireless access chez Starbucks ...

It'll be good to hear how you're getting on with working from home.

Good luck with going back to work - in Germany, where I used to live, being a Working Mum is not really the Done Thing, because One Should Be With One's Baby If One Has Any Motherly Feelings at All, so I'm always curious to know how women combine work and motherhood. FWIW, at the department where I used to work in Germany, none of the women had kids - at the departments where I work in the UK, three babies are due before the end of the year, including mine, and three have already been born.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

My partner tells me that when they were in Germany, they also discovered that fathers who Worked Did Not Cook, and could not grocery shop because the stores closed early, and Did Not Mourn miscarriage or visit family members in hospital. Sounds limiting.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

could not grocery shop because the stores closed early,

My sister lived in Germany, and it was very difficult for her to keep up with the things that needed doing (school/work), and still make it to the grocery store for shopping and little stuff like that. She said it was just impossible, some weeks. I always felt she needed a wife to take care of her domestic tasks for her.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

It's a bit better now that a lot of supermarkets are open until 7 or 8pm, and as opposed to the UK, "normal" shops usually stay open until 6.30, not until 5, 5.30 or 6. What I would really miss, though, were I to move back, is weekend shopping. The only places you can get stuff on Sundays in Germany are filling stations. Sad but true.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

In defence of the German male, I would like to point out that those few young German dads I know (n=ridiculously small and including my own DH), are not like that at all - they share the load.

But yes, patriarchal patterns are still strong in society. And they wonder why people don't have babies. Did your partner also tell you about the "Please, please have more babies" ad campaigns? They've been running for years and years now.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Very cool!

In collaborations I tend to be the details person too. We are trying to find an anti-details person who can do conflicts to complement me for a job we hope to share next year (Shad program co-directors.)