A baby and a fellowship rejection in the same week

Over four years ago, I came home from the hospital in the evening after a day that started with me thinking I was in labor (and so did the midwives, by the way) but ended with me not being in labor anymore, while the baby was still in my uterus. I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed, but just before that I checked my email. Back then, my private email and most of my work email came to the same email address. And there it was: a long-awaited email from the EU with the results of whether I was going to get a Marie Curie fellowship to do my own research back in my home country. As the EU did back then, the email just said something along the lines of “fellowship results,” and then you had to click a link, log into their participant portal, find out that your password has expired, make a new password, and log in again to find a very cryptic message that still did not really say whether you got the money or not. I was exhausted from being in the hospital all day, but my heart was racing at the same time because I wanted to know if I got the fellowship or not.

Fast forward: I did not get the fellowship, but I did have the baby 5 days later. And now that I look back at those emails, I’m surprised to see that within 2 weeks of giving birth, I was emailing with the professor who gave me feedback on this grant, on how to rework it into a new grant. I so very much wanted to succeed in academia that I kept thinking and working around birthing a baby. But before you get all “judgy,” I also remember very clearly how this was a way for me to stay connected to my normal world, my world that I was used to, and to try and avoid the world I had experienced with my first-born, a world where I felt so alone with a crying baby. I was not – and still am not – someone who can sit still for a long time. I wanted to continue to think about science even though I had just had a baby. I want to take care of a baby and think at the same time.

I was reminded of this when, the other day, a journalist tweeted the following:

Back in the office after a week off. Emailed an academic with Q's about their research paper - received a response within just a couple of hours: "Sorry for not getting back to you immediately, I had a baby today. In answer to your questions..." Wow. That's job dedication!

— Rachael Pells (@RachaelPells) May 10, 2018

And, of course, Twitter had lots of opinions that Rachael Pells summarized for Times Higher Education. But as you can imagine from the story I shared, this could have been me (that is, before you come to the part where she describes that the academic in question was male).

In hindsight, perhaps I wish my work email wouldn’t come to my private email address. In hindsight, I wish I wouldn’t have checked my email after a long day in the hospital. And in hindsight, I wish I could have been more in the moment with my little baby. I wish I had seen more examples of how people actually do this, as opposed to stories of women who submit manuscripts while in early labor. I wish academia wasn’t so much of a linear career path, where I was afraid to take some time to be in the moment with a little baby. But there are many moments in a day. Some moments were spent mindfully bonding with my new baby, and other moments were spent sending emails. That is how it was.

Babyattachmode (@BabyAttachMode) is the pseudonym of a neuroscience PhD turned industry scientist. This story was published on May 15, 2018, on her Scientopia blog, In Baby Attach Mode (available here), and has been republished here with her permission.