Work-life balance

There’s been some talk on the internet about work-life balance by ProfLikeSubstance, Dr. O  and DrugMonkey inspired by some of the ridiculousness over at the ecology ListServ. It made me think about what a weird term work-life balance is; like there’s your work, and then there’s your life. In my case, that would currently make a pretty sad life, because that would mean that aside from work and (attempts to) sleep, there’s only a couple of hours of ‘life’ left each day. And a large proportion of those hours is used to care for BlueEyes. Good thing I see my work as ‘life’ too.

I try to remind myself every now and then that if all of this science stuff fails (which it sometimes surely feels like), I don’t want to have the feeling that I’ve wasted all of my time (that I could have spent with BlueEyes) doing things that I don’t like. And also if I do get tenure and become the awesome scientist that I want to be I don’t want to look back and realize that I’ve spent years working so hard that I don’t enjoy it anymore. So I try to be efficient, and I spend a lot of time trying to get enough sleep so I that I’m not terribly annoyed by things that happen at work.

 

Today that’s going pretty well, and that’s why I’m going to keep my happiness by not even starting to say what I think about all the things being said on the ecology ListServ. Okay maybe one thing: seriously?

Parenting for lazy people

Since Time Magazine came out with a mother breastfeeding her child on the front cover yesterday , people have been shocked, excited and grossed by this and the debate aboutattachment parenting seems to continue. A lot of people make it seem like attachment parenting is something you can only do when you have endless time on your hands, meaning when you’re a rich, stay-at-home mom.  

“If you are preparing organic baby food, breastfeeding on demand, washing cloth diapers and co-sleeping, there's little time for writing, filing, painting, data entry, making music, nursing, engaging in politics, teaching or appearing on TV to tell other women what to do.”

 I think this is not true; I think attachment parenting is excellent for lazy people. Because if you breastfeed, you don’t need to get up in the middle of the night to make a bottle for your baby. You don’t need to wash an endless number of bottles, and you don’t need to buy formula. When you go somewhere you don’t have to bring bottles, formula and water. When you nurse on demand, you don’t have to watch the clock and remember when you last fed your baby. You don’t have to listen to a crying baby for an hour because only then will it be time for his feeding again.

When you co-sleep, you don’t need to get up in the middle of the night when you hear you baby cry in another room. You will attend to your baby’s needs even before he wakes up, and after a while even before you wake up yourself. To me, co-sleeping was inevitable when I had to go back to work; I just couldn’t make it on even less sleep than I was already getting.

Yup, that's me cooking dinner with BlueEyes on my back

When you carry your baby in a sling, you don’t have to worry about bringing the bulky stroller. You don’t have to worry if you go somewhere with a lot of stairs. Also, you can get a lot done in and around the house with a baby on your back so you don’t have to prevent the baby from burning his hands on the oven while you are cooking.

When you have your baby eat by himself from when he is 6 months old, you don’t have to simultaneously feed a baby and try to eat yourself. You can sit down at night, eat dinner and have a conversation while the baby is playing and eating his food (okay and then the dinner table/floor is going to be a huge mess for a while, so this is the part that is not really for lazy people, but having a quiet dinner is worth it for me). To this day, we have never given BlueEyes baby food from a jar. Not necessarily out of any type of principle, but just because he eats what we eat, and otherwise we have some frozen purees that we’ve made before (which literally takes maybe 10 minutes to make).

So I think we shouldn’t make attachment parenting bigger than it is: parenting for lazy people. And by the way, attachment parenting is NOT deciding not to vaccinate your children.

The people from the future took our jobs!

Robots in science are usually awesome: it’s nice not to have to pipette a whole bunch of 96 wells plates, and it’s a good thing when you don’t have to sit next to the mass spectrometer the whole night to feed it new samples. Those are relatively easy things to do, and it’s nice to have robots to them for us.

Electrophysiology, and specifically whole cell patch clamp recordings are a different game in my opinion: it’s difficult to do, and not a lot of people are able to do it well. It puts those of us who are able to patch cells in the luxurious position that people want to collaborate with us, and put our names on their papers. I've heard it’s an excellent skill to have on your CV when looking for jobs. (And, but this is not as relevant here: it’s such an awesome technique because it allows you to listen to what cells are saying to each other!).
However, this article gave me this industrial revolution feeling, that the machines will take over our jobs and the awesomeness of being able to patch cells will soon be available to everyone. Ed Boyden and Craig Forest developed a robot that can patch cells to do whole cell recordings. And even worse: the robot can patch cells in a living brain, which is even way harder than patching cells in a slice.

So for as long as it is going to last, I am going to feel special that I have mastered the art of whole cell recordings in brain slices, and I am hoping that it’s going to be a while until robots can think of research projects and write papers.

All play and no work?

I generally love the lab that I am in: I’ve learned to patch cells here and even though I (still) don’t have my own funding, my PI allows me to do the research that I want, and I even got a technician who is helping me with that. I love that we go sailing in the summer on a weekday, and I love that every single person in my lab likes to cook and eat delicious food (which we often do). I love that we help each other out: this past week all 15 of us helped a labmate move to a new place. I love a lot of other things about the lab that I am in too.

What I don’t love (and I’ve written about this before), is that all this fun that we’re having means that some people rarely ever do any work anymore. There are days when people come in, start with coffee at the coffee table that is strategically placed in the middle of the lab, sit there long enough for lunch to start, and then hang out until it’s time for an ever-present beer from the lab fridge. New people that join our lab do so because they like that we’re having shots at 2PM or because we have a potluck every week when the PI is traveling. 

And I hate to feel like such a grumpy person, but this really annoys me (as I said this morning on twitter). Especially now that I have BlueEyes, I try to work pretty efficient, which means that for most of the day I am busy doing something. And being busy while other people are sitting at the table laughing together makes me feel lonely. It makes me feel a loser for being at work instead of hanging out. And when I’m doing a slice experiment, I’ll usually hang out and talk when I’m waiting for my drug to wash onto my cell, but especially on days when I’m working hard but stuff doesn’t work, it makes me feel alone. 

I’ve debated whether I should talk to my PI about this, but that feels too much like telling on people. Besides, I leave everyday around 4PM to pick BlueEyes up from daycare, so who am I to say something anyway? And my PI takes pride in his so-called ‘hands-off’ mentorship. The one time I suggested that one of the grad students could perhaps use a bit more guidance (he’s in his 7^th year with no papers yet); he said that he wasn’t that type of a mentor.

So I guess I’m going to continue to find a balance between work and play, keep a smile on my face and remember that somewhere in the world there are people working.

Pumping milk at work – a technical report

Introduction

Recently, there were a couple of articles in the news talking about how breast feeding is not free at all, because women who breastfeed longer than 6 months earn significantly less, even five years after their baby was born, compared to women who breastfeed shorter than 6 months or women who formula feed their infants. It turns out that this difference in earnings is mostly because women who breastfeed longer than 6 months work a lot less than the other groups. In other words, women who (have to) go back to work sooner apparently have a hard time breastfeeding past 6 months.

To me breastfeeding is like walking; you do it because you can. And if you can’t, there are alternatives like using a wheelchair. However, very few people use a wheelchair if they are able to walk just because it is more convenient. That’s not to say that breastfeeding is easy: it’s a learned skill and the fact that we rarely ever see people nurse their babies makes it harder to learn. The same holds true for pumping milk; even though there are some great resources online, when you have to do it yourself you’ve probably never seen someone else pump milk, and perhaps you don’t even have women nearby to ask questions. That’s why I decided to write up what has worked for me over the past months.

Materials and methods

It’s very important to have a good double sided electric breast pump. I have the Medela pump in style , but if I’d have to choose again I would probably go for the Medela Freestyle, since it’s weighs a lot less, which is nice if you go to a conference. Save your receipt, because breast pumps can be tax deductible. The advantage of the black signature Medela bags is that it’s also an easy way to come into contact with other pumping moms who recognize your bag (yes, this happened to me multiple times). It is important that your breast shields fit well; you can ask a lactation consultant for advice. I also have one of these, so that I can pump hands free.

Before going back to work it is important that 1) your baby can drink from a bottle and 2) you have familiarized yourself with your breast pump. To do this, I started pumping one feed in the evening when BlueEyes was 6 weeks old (apparently there’s a window between 4-8 weeks when it’s best to teach babies to drink from a bottle. I have no idea whether that is true but it worked for us.) and Dr. BrownEyes would give him the bottle. I noticed that it takes some practice to pump a decent amount of milk, so don’t worry if you don’t pump a lot the first time. It is also nice to have about a week’s supply of milk in the fridge before you go back to work, so that if pumping doesn’t go well because you’re too stressed in that first week, at least you don’t have to worry about having too little milk to feed your baby. I built a supply in the freezer by giving BlueEyes a little bit less milk in the evening than the amount I pumped (don’t worry about the baby, he will drink whatever he needs during the night). If that doesn’t work: your supply is highest in the morning, so alternatively you can nurse your baby on one breast and then pump the other to build up your freezer stash. Also, make sure to figure out ahead of time where you can pump. I realize that having a clean room and a fridge available is a luxury, and that that’s probably why more higher educated women continue to breast feed, but no one should be afraid to ask for this. In some countries it is a right for women to pump milk for their baby during work hours.

Results

So for the past 6 months I have been pumping milk at work for BlueEyes. Until a couple weeks ago I religiously pumped for about 15 minutes at 10AM and 1PM every day. This fit very well with my experiments, which I think is part of why it worked so well for me. I would cut brain slices, and while those were incubating I would pump the first time, and when I was done with my recording experiment I would pump the second time. I have two sets of breast shields, so I don’t have to bother about washing them in between. I pumped about 200-250 ml (6-9 oz) in total, and because BlueEyes drinks a bit more, I would also pump in the morning after I nursed him. In total I pumped about 300 ml (10 oz) and that’s exactly what he drank in daycare. Being a post-doc, I obviously don’t have my own office, but our department has an empty office that the pumping women can use to pump milk. Now that BlueEyes is eating solids and I have the feeling that my supply is pretty stable, I usually pump once or sometimes twice at work (my total yield is still about 250-300 ml per day).

Troubleshooting

What can you do when you are not pumping enough milk for your baby?

Your milk supply is a matter of supply (duh) and demand, so the first thing to do is pump more often or try to get multiple letdown reflexes during one pumping session. Also, make sure you empty your breasts well, because that will let your body know that more milk is needed. What I would sometimes do if my supply was getting low, was to ‘cluster pump’ at night. After BlueEyes had gone to bed I would pump according to the following schedule (pump 7 min – rest 7 min – pump 5 min – rest 5 min – pump 3 min – rest 3 min – pump 1 min). This did not yield a lot of milk at the time of pumping, because I had just nursed BlueEyes to sleep, but it does give a pretty good boost for your milk supply.

If this doesn’t work sufficiently, you can take various herbs, teas or foods to increase your supply . I’ve personally never tried that, but I've heard it works.

What can you do when it takes you very long to pump?

To me, the time it takes to pump depends for the most part on how long it takes me to get a letdown reflex. Some people like to look at pictures or movies of their baby to speed this up, but I usually just take a couple deep breaths (at home it even helps me to picture the empty office I usually pump in). However, if you still have problems getting a letdown reflex, and therefore need a long time to empty your breasts, you can consider using an oxytocin nasal spray.

Conclusion

I wrote this post to share my experience and to show that it is very possible to breastfeed for at least 6 months and work. Even though I couldn’t believe it at first, breastfeeding does get better and more fun and much less painful (even not painful at all) after 6 months.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lactation consultant or any other type of medical professional. However, feel free to comment or email me if you have any questions.