Welcome to the Jungle

It’s been a thrill for the last five months. I have entered into that adventure that has driven countless other women to blogging – motherhood – and, like them, am looking for an outlet that validates my obsession that is my new daughter. I was going to call this the Obnoxious Mommy Blogger, but it looks like something similar has been taken. Instead I will also occasionally blog about the other topic that occupies my life – science, specifically biology. It’s a crazy balance, trying to be a scientist and a mom, especially at this stage of my career, so let’s all enjoy the rollercoaster together, shall we?

I was working as a postdoctoral researcher in experimental evolution in a spectacular lab in the United States, when Oops! made her presence known the night of my engagement. Who, you ask, does a pregnancy test the night they get engaged? Yes, that’s right, I have a spectacular talent for bad timing. And who, you ask, names their baby bump Oops!? What can I say? It stuck. I’ll not get into the details, but this sudden development required not only the postponement of the wedding (I’ll not look bloated in my wedding dress, thank you) but the search for a new job. The United States has its advantages, not the least of which is bad Mexican food and undercooked hamburgers for a reasonable price, but maternity benefits is not one of them. So I finished up experiments as fast as my mounting nausea and failing attention span would allow, and flew home.

The first few months of motherhood have been wonderful, like floating in a dream – my baby, now named Hannah, is a sweet, bright, glorious little girl, with lots of smiles and a propensity for chatter. My white shepherd, Stella, loves her, and my fiancé, Brian, is a loving and fantastic father. But it’s not easy to switch off the career drive, and I feel my expensively educated brain is starting to wonder if it can switch off completely and go back to picking new drapes for the master bedroom. Although, I could quite easily spend another career picking drapes for others, but that’s another story. The point is, while the conflict between career and motherhood is hardly unexplored territory, it strikes a chord for so many, and I guarantee, it never stops being entertaining, if nothing else.