Back to the books

Okay, so I haven't been a perfect soldier - I missed a few days of blogging. I think I will have to allow myself time off on weekends.

So now that the big pregnancy extravaganza seems to have blown over, I'd like to re-focus my mind on science once again. Becoming a parent still takes up a substantial amount of thought time in my brain, but I don't want to expend all my mental energy on that thought.

Perhaps I'll try to start each workday with a blog to gather my thoughts together and lay out my scientific plans for the day.

PA and I have talked about this newish technique that applies to our field, and I am trying to think about it in the back of my mind to see if I can come up with any neat projects that could make use of this technology. I generally conceptualize projects from a compuational stand-point, as I have little to no wet-lab experience. I remember reading that academics (this advice was directed to mathematicians specifically, but can be applied more broadly) should keep their top 10 dream projects in the back of their mind, and every time they learn a new technique, they should mentally check if that technique would be of any use to their top 10. Typically it won't, but once in a blue moon, one will stick, and then you can have some advancement on your dream project, and other people will wonder "How did you ever come up with that solution?"
Maybe I'll have an "epiphany" of my own someday.

In the mean time I have some long standing interests in a related field of my own, and more generally in the big questions of "origins." I'm not all that interested in the origin of life itself, as I recognize that is probably too tricky for most of the methods I use - and I actually think that it was so stochastic a beginning that we wouldn't have all that much to learn from resolving that particular puzzle. I may be naive for thinking this way - but I just find myself more interested in synthetic biology or astrobiology than resolving the actual origin of life on our planet.

I think part of why these "big questions" appeal to me has to do with my mathematics training. I like knowing that there is an actual answer. There is only one true history, and knowing that somehow makes the effort for discovering the truth worthwhile. It may turn out that the sequences we have available to us today are too saturated and noisy to reach that far back in time, but knowing that there still is a real answer out there is satisfying.

But for now I need to continue some reading, to see what has been thought of already, and to mentally apply those techniques to my top 10 list. Oh, and I need to practice my talk for the conference this weekend. And hopefully I will hear back from the editor about my manuscript that is out for review - fingers crossed that it will be accepted for publication!

Losing control

While trying to chose an appropriate title for this post, I accidentally realized what has been causing my unsettling feelings since the decision was made to no longer prevent a pregnancy. What scares me and worries me the most about this situation (and most situations that I obsess about) is the plethora of "what if"s.

What if I can't handle being a parent? What if it is the wrong decision for me? What if I try my best and it just isn't enough? All these worries, and I don't even know if we will be able to get pregnant.

The commonality, however, is that they all revolve around me having some vague notion of control over my life. Right now I feel as though I am in control, more or less, of my life. Sure there are a billion things that contributed to where I am now that I had no control over, and lots more that continue to lead me along this path or that - but for some reason I worry that becoming a parent, or even just getting pregnant will suddenly loosen whatever grip I feel I have on the reigns.

I've known that I am a control freak for a long time. I don't really like the term as it suggests that most people don't like being in control, and those that are, well, they're freaks. That's just silly. The whole idea of free will is based upon having some control, and owning it. Isn't it? Well in any case, I don't want to have control over everything - but there is a tipping point, it seems, in my mind, where if I have less control than that, I start to feel helpless. And I worry that being a parent will take me to that limit or beyond. Scares the hell out of me.

This should be an adventure - we can't always control what happens to us, only how we react to what happens to us. But I find that I am talking myself into the idea of becoming a parent - maybe that's only because this feeling of wanting a baby of my own is so new. So I question it, just as I question most of my new purchases ("Do I really need this? Do I really like it?") and decisions (I used to feel sick after re-arranging the furniture - not physically ill, but anxious at the very least). Maybe I just don't trust myself, or maybe I'm just being neurotic and need to calm the hell down.

I'm just scared because not knowing if I can get pregnant, or when it will happen, or how it will affect my life is a little unsettling for me - so many unknowns - so many things that I don't know if I have any control over. Well at least I have a terrific partner who's willing to see me through this, and knows me well enough to make me bring my head out of the sand every now and then.

Knowledge

It is funny how knowledge can influence our daily lives. For most of the day I was preoccuppied with the uncertainty of whether or not I was pregnant. Yesterday I didn't mind waiting a little while longer to find out. But today, my patience had evaporated. It didn't help that I was feeling a little queasy for most of the day (including, of course, the morning).

I did, however, manage to have a terrific meeting with PA where some exciting project ideas were discussed. I have much reading to do now! Luckily my pregnancy preoccupation did not hinder my brain in the meeting. The same thing cannot be said for the remainder of my day. I couldn't even make my way through a 2 paged "letter" from a journal.

On the way home from work, the husband and I picked up a home pregnancy test. My dear husband prepared dinner for us while I went and did the test.

In clear digital letters on the results window it said "Not pregnant."

I went to show my husband the results. He pulled me close and kissed the top of my head. We were both sad.

The truth is, we both want to have a baby, I've just been too scared and too worried to actually admit that. There are other truths that might prevent us from ever having our own children, including my husband being exposed to radiation at a nuclear power plant several years back. I've always wondered if I might not be able to conceive as some cruel joke because of all the years I spent trying so hard not to get pregnant.

After talking things over some more, we decided that we weren't going to try and prevent a pregnancy anymore. I guess this means we are trying to get pregnant, but not agressively. I still wonder if I'll lay awake in bed at night terrified of the consequences of this choice.

And then I think, "Wow! A baby!"

A little bit of knowledge from a home pregnancy test gave me a lot more insight into what I was really feeling. The future is still uncertain, but at least I'm not the one keeping this one aspect from moving forward anymore.

Who knows what will happen next, or how I'll feel tomorrow? I will just try to think of it as an adventure - advice given to me by a really smart friend. Adventures are not nearly as worrisome.

Whirring and buzzing

Today was an eventful day, in my head.

My goal for the day was to complete, at least in rough form, my presentation for an upcoming conference. I am happy to say that I accomplished this goal. I can now start practicing the talk and tweaking the slides accordingly. I have never given a conference talk before, let alone a quick 15 minute talk (although I've done 45 minute talks for weekly seminars, lab meetings and job interviews). How do you get your point across in 15 minutes without completely glossing over all the details? I chose to focus on my favorite findings - if time permits I may elaborate on them.

But the really big happenings of today took place primarily in my head, not in my presentation slides. You see, dear reader, there is a very small possibility that I may be pregnant. Or after three months off the pill my cycle might just be whacky like it was in the years before I went on the pill. Some basic probability and logic leads me to think that I am not pregnant - but I was shocked to find that part of me actually hopes that I am!

This feeling took me by complete suprise. I went through a rather long phase where I had decided that I didn't want to have children of my own (adoption some day, perhaps) - but then friends of mine started having children of their own, and darn them, they made it look appealing. And long before that I had enough fear put into me about getting pregnant (having 3 older cousins become teenaged moms will do that to you) that I mostly associated pregnancy with terrifying, unspeakables. The fear did not suddenly disappear upon my newly bestowed marital status either. Children are, after all, a huge responsibility. Not to mention the whole child birth/delivery ordeal. That still terrifies me.

Perhaps part of why I hope to be pregnant has to do with the weight of indecision no longer falling on my shoulders; if I'm pregnant, there's nothing to be indecisive about anymore - the baby will come, and we will make the neccessary adjustments, and do the best we can. But if I'm not pregnant, I have to play this passive-agressive game all over again. Do we actually try to get pregnant, or try to prevent it? If we try to prevent it, will we regret that decision later? If we try to have a baby now, are we ready? Wouldn't waiting a little while longer be safer? We'd be back in our home country in about two years, with paid parental leave rather than here where we'd only be partly able to cash in on that sweet motherland deal. Seems rather sub-optimal to me.

And thinking about all of the nuts and bolts, financial, emotional, immigrational and otherwise just sets my head spinning! I even wish I could take a whole year myself to be with the baby. Maybe I would change my mind before the year was through, but having that choice would be comforting. For a while I've thought that my husband would be the one to leave work for a longer period of time to take care of the baby. It makes financial sense, as my wages earn us more at this point, and if I continue with my career at this rate, I could even hope to land a faculty position after this postdoc. A whole year off could set me back. It makes me have crazy thoughts about bringing the baby to the lab with me (the room which houses my work space is crowded enough as is!) But babies sleep a lot, and I typically only require a computer and internet access to do most of my work. The only reason I wouldn't do it all from home is because I occasionally need to interact with people, and enjoy attending seminars (though I can't imagine the baby enjoying that!).

Babies, babies, babies. How did my parents do it? How are my friends making it seem so enticing?

The first post

My phd advisor told me once that we scientists should spend some quality time writing every day. That is, we should find time to practice putting our thoughts into coherent sentences beyond the fragments that come to us only in our own heads.

At the time I didn't really understand why. I usually didn't have much on my mind worth writing down. Or so I thought. In reality, I had too much on my mind that finding the clarity to pick any single thing to write down was the hurdle. So with a few sporadic attempts I mostly failed and have not written, for the sake of writing, every day.

I hope to change this, starting now.

I think things have come to a head. I wish I had one of those penseives they have in the Harry Potter universe. Then I could put my thoughts in safe place outside of my head and not worry about never finding them again.

I want to put some thoughts down here so that I can avoid the hours I spend laying awake in bed at night thinking about things. Maybe then I'll wake up when the alarm goes off, instead of an hour later.

I am in the first year of my first postdoc. At an arguably fantastic school, in a top notch lab. My advisor is well respected, and a terrific person to boot. However, this advisor (who shall be henceforth referred to as PA - postdoc advisor) is often away at meetings, or otherwise terribly busy, and I rarely even have interactions with them. I sometimes wonder if I will have made enough of an impression on PA when it comes time to ask for a reference letter.

I have been thinking about the next step in my career. I was told that hiring season for faculty posistions begins roughly in August. I don't think I'll have a strong enough application this year (as I said, I'm still in my first postdoc year) to be really competitive, though I am pretty good on paper. But the main reason I've been thinking so much about this is because my husband and I might want to have a baby. We are not actively trying just yet, and I'm not even sure if I ever want to for sure. But the thought of being 8 months pregnant and having to schedule interviews for faculty positions is enough to scare me into trying to plan for better timing if we do end up getting pregnant.

Sigh.