Or how trying to get pregnant (and stay that way) turns a rational human being into an irrational hormone infested one. Add to this the joys of being a woman in science and this blog is the result.
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I can hardly believe that my little man is already 3 months old, the time has absolutely flown! Today we will have the adventure of our first flight together as me and T are going to my parents for a few days to see them and my sister (F) before she leaves for Ecuador for two years. I hope it's ok but it will fall in T's fussy/going to sleep time (sorry other passengers) at least it's only a short flight - about an hour and a half. Apparently there will also be quite a gathering of the clan on Sunday as several family members come over to see F off and meet T for the first time which will be lovely.
We took T swimming a couple of times this week and he seemed to enjoy it. We might be going again today with a couple of the women from my mother's group but I'll see how the day pans out. First problem is that some contractors have turned off our water for the morning and I really need to get some nappies washed and dried before travelling this evening.
Stolen from Inspired by Elizabeth - things I call T
Mr Theopotamous Theopot Little Guy Little Man Sweetheart My love Monsieur Wiggles Monsieur Stinky-butt Monsieur farty-pants Chubby cheeks Darling My baby
I'm sure there are others but not often his name - I wonder if he'll ever learn it?
Julie asked if Danish is hard to learn and the answer is yes and no. It is a Germanic language and as such, with my native English and school learnt German, along with 6 months spent in Norway several years ago I found I could rapidly extract meaning from written Danish. Spoken Danish was, and still is, a different matter however. Danish contains many sounds unknown to a native English speaker and I endured months of frustration as I tried to speak Danish only for the person I was speaking to looking confused then finally saying the word I was trying to say and to my ear exactly how I was saying it. I did discover a talent for following conversations by a combination of context, body language and picking up a few words that I understood. It took most of the first 2 years before I spoke good-enough Danish for most people to understand what I was trying to say and to start using it as my daily language at work. My husband also understands quite well now but doesn't speak it at work so struggles a little when called upon to speak Danish.
Anyway, back to the story...
Towards the end of January we heard that funding had been secured for another patent manager and the job was S's, he started in February 2005. We later discovered that he had received a glowing recommendation from one of the people he was working with at my company. So S signed a contract for a permanent job with a minimum of 3 years training (supported by the company) before he could take his professional qualifications. We tried not to think about the fact I only had a 2 year contract and was expected to return to the UK at the end of it.
In August 2005 we got married on what was possibly the wettest day of the year - so much for the romantic horse and cart ride from the church to my parents house for the reception... By this time we had been together for nearly 8 years and knew we wanted kids so a month or so after the wedding we decided to start trying. Since S was enjoying his job we had also begun to discuss staying on in Denmark and investigating how to make this possible with my contractual obligation to return to my previous job in Glasgow.
On Christmas day 2005 I got a positive pregnancy test and with 4 months left on my contract we started to really look at our options. First we would need somewhere to live since the Danish post-doc was due to return at the end of March and would need her flat back. We figured, worst case scenario, I would return to Glasgow and work for a few months and then go on maternity leave early so I could return to Denmark to have the baby and be with S.
In the last week or so there have been some changes,
After a trip to ikea we finally got around to buying some extra kitchen cupboards and setting them up so we have a lot more storage space and worktop than before. The trip also resulted in some shelves for the shed - life is feeling a lot more organised!
The kitchen before - note the breakfast bar
and now with far more useful cupboards in the same space.
Also I finally got around to having my hair cut - as usual it had been months because I keep trying a new hairdresser and not liking the results so I leave it ages. Well this time I love it, I've got a fringe (bangs?) for the first time in years and she took out loads of the weight so my head feels like it's weightless. The best thing? She is at the end of my road - it would be hard for her to be more convenient.
S and I had a big chat about contraception at the weekend as I am very conflicted about the coil. We have decided to (continue) using condoms at least until my periods start and then maybe re-visit the discussion. I'm a little nervous about introducing hormones into my body because of the risk of it affecting milk production and the fact that they can transfer into the milk. It just doesn't seem like a great idea to feed my little boy with even small doses of artificial female hormones.
I found myself planning a paper I need to write the other day and chatting to S about work which is cool. I'm not ready to go back to work yet but it's nice to feel like my brain is beginning to work again.
Today our mother's group met for the second time and it was very nice. Everyone has relaxed a lot more and we are all agreed that the "feed every 3 hours whatever advice" is stupid. We're planning to go swimming together and to see "Sex and the City" and I'm looking forward to getting out of the house more.
I've been trying to capture T's smile in a picture for several days now but he stops smiling and just looks intently at the camera whenever I point it at him. This slightly blurry one is the best I have managed so far. oh and there is a slight smile or two at the start of this video
another pic - you never know when you might need a turtle finger puppet so it's best to keep one handy in your pocket.
This one is a little bit of everything so apologies if it's a bit random...
My last period was a year ago and I wonder a little when my next one will be. Related to this is the fact that the GP has recommended that I get a coil for contraception. I currently have the prescription and a referral letter sitting on my desk waiting for me to deal with them. It is the Mirena coil with progesterone in it and I have had one before and thought it was great... It would be nice not to think about contraception for however long before we start trying for another but do I really want to add hormones to the mix? Part of me would like to know that I'm cycling in the mean time (last time I had very light periods and not every month), also I don't know how long I will want to wait - the fact it took 2 years and 2 miscarriages to get pregnant with T is a factor as is my age (34). Also I will need to go and get it removed when we do decide to start trying. I do want to use contraception for a while as even though I want another I want a break first but I'm not a big fan of condoms.
Both my sisters' visits were great and involved trips to the zoo, Tivoli and listening to music in the park as part of the jazz festival. My nephew was a little annoyed that his baby cousin went to bed later than him since he thinks age should be relevant to bedtimes.
Sitting at home on the computer is dangerous as when I got sent an email about a one day flight sale it was to good to resist. So we will all be going to Barcelona at the beginning of September for 5 days. I'm really looking forward to seeing it again and showing S around. I'm a bit nervous about the flight but will have a trial run in a couple of weeks when me and T are going back to my parents for a few days. While there we'll also be going to my sister's leaving party before she goes to Ecuador to teach for 2 years.
It was decided to overlap the project a little so the Danish post-doc arrived in Glasgow at the beginning of April allowing us to work together on the project for a month. We flew to Denmark on Friday the 30th (wow exactly 4 years before T was born) having spent the previous night in the pub watching Scotland play Denmark at football and not sure who we should support. We drank a couple too many beers and were a little worse for wear the next morning. We arrived at the airport with more luggage than is strictly allowed but luckily didn't get charged excess baggage. We were met at the airport by one of my new colleagues and had the weekend to settle in before I started work on the Monday.
The first few weeks were spent settling in and learning about the things that work differently in Denmark. For example, the supermarkets only take Danish debit cards - not a good thing to find out with a weeks worth of shopping that has just been rung up. Honestly it was exhausting, we fell into bed by 10 every night for at least the first 2 months. By July we were beginning to feel settled, we had our social security numbers, a bank account and had completed a Danish class with Berlitz. We had also discovered that classes were available free to foreigners in town and had signed up to start those soon.
The classes allowed us to meet some lovely people who remain our close friends and it was great to begin to understand what was being said around us. However S's job search wasn't going well and we were discussing the possibility that he may have to start looking for work back in the UK. He was getting pretty depressed about this and it was putting a strain on us both. Finally we managed to arrange for him to get some experience working in the patent department of the company I was working for this started in the November and despite it being unpaid work he was a lot happier.
In the December he had an interview with another large Danish company who needed more patent managers but he heard quite quickly that they had hired someone else. However they really liked him and the manager was hopeful that he could persuade his bosses to hire S as well.
Here in Denmark the health visitor normally helps new mothers to meet each other by organising a mother's group. She will host the first meeting and then it is up to the individual mothers to arrange future meetings when it suits them. This is a great source of support especially during maternity leave since most women work here so existing friends are generally unavailable during the day and it can be lonely being at home with just a baby at times.
However due to the strike, the first time a health visitor came out to see us was last week and they have such a backlog of work that those of us who gave birth during the strike have slipped through the cracks a little and they won't be arranging groups for us. However one of the local mums asked her to pass on her number and arranged it herself.
So today we had our first get together, there were 4 of us with babies ranging from 6-11 weeks old. We are all first time mums with massive worries about whether we are doing stuff right or not. It seems it might not be such a bad thing that I've been left to work things out for myself, with the help of my family and the internet and books. I've been feeding on demand and letting T sleep if and when he wants to and things have been going well. All the other women had seen our health visitor more and she is very keen on routines so they all seemed stressed about feeding every 3 hours even if this meant waking up the baby or letting him/her cry. They were also stressed about how to get their babies to sleep "on their own" whereas I think it feels natural to sooth T to sleep by rocking him and/or feeding him. Also my GP said he seemed fine and to feed him when he wants it (ie on demand).
I think I will have to be careful not to feel pushed by their way of doing things into feeling guilty but maybe I can help them to relax a little as well. Perhaps if I practise saying to myself that there is lots of different advice and "this" is common advice in the UK I'll avoid feeling bad.
We had a fantastic time in Peru; hiking and seeing the sites, including Machu Picchu. In our last week there S proposed at sunset on a boat ride on Lake Titicaca. 2 days later, after a trip involving a bus not turning up, a local bus and a nearly missed flight I was on my way back to Glasgow and S had headed off to meet a friend and travel for another couple of months in Bolivia.
After I'd been back about a month we heard the result of the grant application - we'd got it! Now this is where things started to get complicated. Not only did the grant require cross-European co-operation but it also required the exchange of people to facilitate a knowledge exchange between the industrial and academic participants and to give the staff members a chance to increase their experience. The plan was that we would exchange 2 post-docs for the maximum possible time, i.e. I would go to Denmark for 2 years and someone from there would come to Glasgow for 2 years. Then we would both return to our original jobs bringing what we had learnt with us. Since I hadn't really expected to get the grant I hadn't really discussed the possibility in any great detail with S and discussing it while he was in Bolivia wasn't really possible. We had discussed the idea of living overseas "for a couple of years" but certainly hadn't thought where.
When he got home we talked about it and he was very negative about the whole idea in general especially since he didn't know what he could do in Denmark and was keen to start "a proper job". The discussion went backwards and forwards for the next couple of months and in the meantime S had a couple of interviews but no job offers. So we arranged to travel to Denmark for me to meet the people I might be working with and for us to spend the weekend exploring the city. The guy who organised the grant had also arranged for S to meet some people who might have a job for him. At the end of the weekend S didn't have a job but we decided we liked Copenhagen and we would give it a go since S might as well look for jobs there as in the UK.
So we returned to Glasgow and started to plan the move, accommodation was the easy part as the other post-doc and me had agreed to switch apartments for the duration of the project. But some packing and planning was necessary before we could move at the end of April 2004.
I was recently asked how I came to be in Denmark so I thought I'd write about it since maybe someone else would be interested too.
If you'd asked me some years ago where in the world I would like to live if I could live anywhere I probably wouldn't have said Denmark. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with Denmark I just imagined somewhere further south and to be honest I probably wouldn't have even thought of Denmark to either approve or dismiss it.
In May 2003 I was working as a postdoc at Glasgow University studying breast cancer and spending a lot of time writing grants to fund my salary and thus continue my research. I was also applying for jobs in case this didn't work out. I honestly expected that I would be moving somewhere as after a while of getting great preliminary analyses on grant applications only to have the full application rejected you begin to think it's never going to happen. At the same time my then boyfriend was writing his PhD thesis and begining to explore patent law as a possible career since he was very tired of bench work.
My group had been working quite closely with a company based in Denmark for a while and when they suggested to us that we could work even more closely by submitting a grant application together my PI thought it was a great idea. Honestly, I didn't really think this grant had any better chance than all the others but it was worth a try. In our favour the grant had to involve an academic partner and an industrial partner and they had to be based in different European countries. Against us was the fact that the grant deadline was less than 3 weeks away on the 22nd May (co-incidentally my birthday). Anyway using the previously written grants we managed to put something together and submit it in time.
At the end of July S submitted his thesis and we left for a month-long trip to Peru. Where I tried not to think about work as I knew I had a contract until April 2004.
The health visitor came (finally) today to check on T. So I ran around trying to make the house look half-way respectable, because of course she'd note me down as a bad mother if I didn't - right? Unfortunately all this was outweighed by the fact that when she undressed T to weigh him his nappy was full of poo. I mean WTF little man? I changed him not long before and he makes me look like I've got him lying in a poo-ey nappy.
Then she proceeded to show me some exercise to do with him including rolling him onto his tummy. Have I mentioned how much he hates tummy time? Anyway, so he starts crying and within seconds I'm crying too, how pathetic am I? I know she's not hurting him and everytime she rolls him over again he's fine and smiling and there I am, tears rolling down my cheeks desperately wanting to just pick him up and cuddle him. Hopeless!
At least he got her back by both peeing and pooing on her (te he).
I must get better at the exercises though as we need T to get a strong neck and back.
Oh and now he's 62cm (24.4inches) and 5.9kg (12.98lb)!
34, married, scientist, English, likes beer and reading, living abroad, miscarried twice and made it third time lucky. Now onward into breastfeeding, nappies and (eventually) going back to work.
email me at thirdtimeluckyemail[at]gmail.com
