It is really hard to put a number on how much time pregnancy, breastfeeding, and caring for a child take away from productive research. There is also the before. It took me four years to get pregnant, with multiple treatments and visits to the doctor along the way. It was very hard on me, both physically and mentally. Much of this was happening on the sidelines, almost in secret. When pregnancy finally happened, we were overjoyed. The first trimester I felt fine, but there were some complications that forced me to rest for three weeks. I was still working, but from home: no traveling, no conferences, no seminars. The second trimester was fantastic. I was productive and determined to get a lot of work done before the baby came. I was not traveling, however, as I was still afraid that something might happen while I was away.
The father (Vladi) and I are both academics—and co-authors. While I was pregnant, we learned that a joint paper (Asriyan Vanasco, 2023) had received a revise-and-resubmit at a top journal. Oh my god! We could do this… we had six months before the other Asriyan Vanasco, Elena, was born. We rented a house in the mountains and worked endlessly on the revision. We took long walks, the baby and I were healthy, I felt great.
For the revision, we were counting on every day we could get. And while working on the final proofs… my water broke, at 3am, a month before the due date. Elena was eager to join us :) Because it was still early in the pregnancy, the doctors suggested that I stay in the hospital and delay birth as much as possible. Luckily Vladi could stay with me. We had left for the hospital at 3am… with our laptops.
While we were there, I could not move from bed, but I felt fine and quite bored. So we asked some friends to organize the delivery of our hand-written revision notes to the hospital. And yes—we worked on the revision while I was in the hospital bed, and Vladi on a guest bed. Finally Elena arrived, and we forgot all about it (definitely me!).
Elena was a healthy baby. I felt great, and we came home relatively soon. My mom was with us. Because Elena was premature she slept a lot, and Vladi and I finalized our revision and managed to send it back as planned—before Elena’s original due date. When I write this, it seems insane that we did it. But we did. I was also grading (this is what happens when your kid comes sooner than expected!).
Elena’s first month was quiet: we were happy, working a bit, adjusting. After that, she started developing a personality, and we both took another three months off work. When Elena was about one month old, an amazing woman started coming to the house every day to help us with everything. She was incredible. Those months were wonderful. We had a lot of help, we could enjoy Elena, and we were not thinking about work.
Then summer came. We did not travel, it was also a relaxed period, but honestly, I missed working. I would come to the office for a few hours, pump, then come home with my fridge-purse. By September, when the academic year started, we were ready to be back. Elena started daycare, we returned to the office full time, we began traveling with and without her (that’s a story for another post), and our new “new” life began.
I feel very lucky. I had a good pregnancy, a good post-partum and a healthy baby. Elena arrived at a good point in my career. For me, the four months plus the summer break were exactly what I needed. But having a child is hard when both parents work a lot, so managing everything can be challenging. Especially for women, since many of us carry most of the mental load, which can be exhausting. We also end up traveling more with our children, and there is very little support for that in the academic community—something I have been working on, so far unsuccessfully.
