Shut Your Face: Things I Wish I Could Punch People for Saying to Me as a New Mom

I’ll be honest, before I had my daughter I had no idea how to talk to other parents, especially new ones. To be frank, I still don’t think I do. What I do realize is how much stress new parents are under for so many different reasons, and how even compliments can be misconstrued with sleep deprivation and constant second-guessing. Likewise, genuine care and concern can be just plain hurtful. Here’s a short list of the things I am ready to punch the next person in the face for.

  1. “You shouldn’t be lifting/doing that.”
    • I had a vaginal delivery, minor 2nd degree tear, no other complications, and had a 10 pound weight limit for 10 days (which was lifted after 8 days; pun not intended).
    • I have been exercising (mostly yoga, also some reps of lunges, twists, and squats using baby as a dumbbell) and I have been carrying my daughter in one arm at times.
    • I lift with my knees and don’t put added pressure on my core and back, because I’m responsible (and have been exercising for years because I want to be fit and healthy).
    • Worry about yourself and trust in my abilities.
    • Mama, listen to your body, not the other voices. You know what you can handle, and your healthcare provider knows you. You got this.

2. “Are you sure your daughter needs…”

      • Yes, I know her different cries.
      • Yes, I know her daily routine.
      • Yes, I know this makes her happy.
      • Yes, I am with her alone for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week.
      • Worry about yourself and trust in my abilities.
      • Mama, listen to your baby, not the other voices. You know what (s)he needs, and his/her pediatrician knows what (s)he needs. You got this.

3. “If you don’t pump, you won’t make so much milk.”

      • This one is the absolute worst of the three, I feel like I need to sit in discomfort, let me boobs leak, and deal with pain for days (which has happened) to help your insecurities. So I’m sorry that this is a personal rant, but someone might find it helpful.
      • Let me tell you about my breastfeeding journey: my daughter was born ~5 weeks early with no ability to latch and a fleeting ability to suckle. She developed jaundice after ~2 days, and the best treatment is eating breast milk and pooping. There is evidence formula is less effective than breast milk. Therefore, in order to feed her enough I had to pump for her bottles. Because she was in the NICU, her guidelines for milk intake were changed daily and were communicated during morning rounds between 9 AM and 12 PM. I was pumping every 3 hours, on the same schedule as her, with no idea how much milk I actually needed for the day. Even so, once my milk came in, in order to feel comfortable I was pumping massive amounts from the first day on (Hit my daily target in two sessions and didn’t actually feel totally empty after either). So yeah, I had an oversupply and I was advised by multiple nurses and lactations consultants to just keep pumping and let it work itself out once she could feed directly from me.
      • Once I hit 7 weeks postpartum, I had clogged ducts at least 5 of those weeks. Sometimes it was just annoying, other times I feel like I need pain killers. It’s really painful to massage my breasts to loosen the plug, even with heat packs or a  shower.  It just feels like such a slight when another woman is willing to tell you to endure that pain.
      • I’m proud of how much milk I’ve been able to pump for my daughter, and all this phrase does is diminish that. We have no idea how my supply is going to be in a few months. Once I go back to work (even if I’m working from home) our routine is going to change. Her cluster feeds are going to come from a bottle more and more often. I’m going to get stressed out. We may need the milk we have frozen, and then again we may not. I’d rather have it and not need it than not have it.
      • I have only gotten this comment from people who did not have an oversupply. So basically, it just makes them look jealous.
      • Worry about yourself and trust my judgement.
      • Mama, listen to your body and your baby. You know what feels comfortable for you, and your baby knows how much (s)he needs to eat. Lactation consultants are your friends; your healthcare provider and your child’s pediatrician do not need to get involved (but they absolutely can if you want them to). You got this.
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Such a Fun Age: Book Review

***Summary***

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Read on my Kindle

Fiction, Family Relationships, Race

4/5 stars

Recommended read for anybody interested by the book description

***Review***

I really enjoyed this book, I had already been on hold for it at the library when it appeared on multiple book lists as a good read, so naturally I started it right away once I could. I had absolutely no desire to ever put this book down, but alas real life called. The writing style was slow-paced in the details in such a way that each of the characters were brought completely to life. Yet, it was fast enough that the major events in the book were one right after another and I constantly wanted to know the “what next”. I felt like the ending was done really well; the time skip brought closure in a way most books don’t offer. Normally I like that; there’s that feeling of the characters living on and being real people with real lives. However, it was just perfect for this book. I still feel like the characters are real people in Pennsylvania walking down the street.

Each of the characters served a specific purpose for the story line and I really appreciated that. I can honestly say that I have truly never hated a character in a book as much as I hated Alix. I think the Disney villains are more likable. This is no exaggeration. She was a stuck up, rich white woman who had no idea how privileged she was. Even her best friends didn’t keep her grounded (in fact, I thought they encouraged her deplorable behavior). She was an inattentive mother, she wasn’t focused on her work, she may as well have just accepted that she had an M.R.S. that she was absolutely terrible at. The other piece that truly bothered me was that she changed her name from Alex to Alix (A-leeks) to escape her past, but in my opinion that’s just a cry for attention.

***Spoilers Ahead***

I felt like the book was really brought together by two key details: Emira and Kelley’s breakup and Alix’s flashback. At first, the breakup bothered me. And then the more I thought about it (and read on), the more I realized that there was no growth in that relationship. Under a realistic setting, there was absolutely no reason they should have been together. If they were real people, a breakup was necessary. Alix’s flashback still upsets me. She admitted that she learned the truth about what happened to the letters back in high school, and yet she continued to hold the grudge and lie because it was more convenient for her. It just painted her as an even more corrupt woman. I wish we had conversations about the Alix’s and Kelley’s of the world, because they are everywhere and they are toxic.

How To Keep Track of All the Papers You’re Reading While Working from Home

Hello people! This morning I shared some information on how I organize journal articles in an Excel spreadsheet to make them easier to find later. The tweet absolutely blew up (by my standards), so I decided to write up a post that expands on some of these ideas. 

1. Keep it Simple. Make a new file (or sheet) every time you start a new project, and also every time you start a new paper. The bulkier the spreadsheet gets, the harder it will be for you to find all those carefully organized thoughts. I have found that it saves me the most time to just start a new file for every manuscript, because then you can name each file accordingly. However, it can also be really useful to have one file per project and each individual manuscript as a separate sheet. This also helps if you want to re-use a specific citation because you can easily figure out where it is saved!

2. Header Lines. These are really important! It took me ~3 years (total guess) to figure out what the most useful headers were. Also, make sure you freeze that row! I found that it was useful to have individual columns for both the first author and the corresponding author. I realized that the corresponding author made a huge difference in figuring out what research came from the same groups. This also has an added bonus of helping you learn who the big players in your field are! The other column that I find most helpful is keeping track of whether or not you have cited this article in a particular paper or project. I think this is useful because sometimes even the most interesting of papers just doesn’t fit once you write it all out. 

3. Journal Abbreviation. This column was a direct result of EndNote frustration. There is always at least one incorrect citation that you will catch and one that you will not. Most often, I have found it comes from the journal abbreviation. Knowing the proper abbreviation can save you some time. Also, learning the common words and their abbreviations can save you some time. Also, if you ever need to type out a quick citation to share in an email or chat, this is really useful.

4. DOI. Again with the sharing! I have learned the hard way and the stubborn way that sharing the DOI is the fastest way to find an article someone recommends, unless you have the URL. However, I have also recently learned that some subscriptions change the URL, so you may still be creating work for some people without knowing it!

5. Adapt. This was neither my first nor my second draft of this spreadsheet. Paying attention to what works and what doesn’t for you specifically is going to be important. When I first started out, I made the columns similarly to my citation manager. Logically,  if the citation manager was working for me, then I didn’t really need to make the spreadsheet, did I? That’s true, but also not the point. The point is that you have to start somewhere, and you don’t need to finish where you started. 

Do you have any other tips and tricks on managing articles? Let’s share with each other and get through this journey together!

Review: Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl

Title: Things We Didn’t Talk About When I was a Girl: A Memoir

Author: Jeannie Vanasco

Rating: 2/5 stars

Review: I wanted to like this book so much, unfortunately it upset me a lot. Despite my low rating, I cannot state enough how important this book is. For Jeannie Vanasco to tell us her story, of her experiences takes an exceptional amount of courage and strength. Furthermore, it’s so important to have a story like this out in the world because in everything she grapples with she is not alone.

The part that sticks with me the most, and ultimately the reason I can’t justify rating this book any higher, is that the book was very stagnant. By that I mean it started where it ended with no ups or downs in between. While I understand that it’s a work of non-fiction, I was looking for more. I even began thinking about moments in the book that would have made it more impactful. At this point I realized that even though Vanasco addresses mental illness and going to therapy, she also states explicitly multiple times that she refused to talk about the assault in therapy because there were other things. I’m sympathetic to her going through a ton of shit in her life but this was a book about dealing with her assault.

The second most sticky feeling was that the title of the book and the content of the book never matched. The only thing I can think that she “didn’t talk about” was calling it rape (because it didn’t fit the definition of rape at the time that it had occurred). She admits to confessing groping of her high school newspaper advisor to her mother (who ultimately told her father). She admits that she told a few people about the assault from her friend. So what exactly did she not talk about? It’s probably not an important point to dwell on at all, but it is really upsetting, because I felt mislead. I thought the book was going to be her admitting something for the first time after 15 years, and in a way it was. It was the first time she really tried to deal with what happened. On the surface level though, she talked about it all.

Ultimately, I won’t even be going back to this book. It has stuck with me, even if it is in a negative way. I truly appreciate the author’s willingness to share her story and write what happened from her perspective. I would not have picked up this book if I didn’t think it was an important story to share. I applaud her for what she did and I truly think it’s important for us to read memoirs like these to understand how people are affected by sexual assault.

Off the Shelf

Work has been so busy lately and I haven’t had much time to enjoy the things that I love doing in my spare time. Going into the new year, I knew this was coming. I couldn’t fully prepare myself for it but it wasn’t a surprise. Now that things are winding down (my calendar is getting progressively more empty as we move forth in February!), I am really thinking about all the things that I didn’t get to do or enjoy. Although I feel like I kept a pretty good balance with most things, I know that there are two things close to my heart that just didn’t get enough attention: my husband and my knitting.

I’m writing this on a pseudo-mental health day. I’m still in my office, but I made the chose to stay away from the lab today. I even worse lab inappropriate clothing (read: a skirt!) to prevent temptation. I’ve also just finished editing a manuscript that I’ve been telling myself I’ll finish for months. I’m not exactly proud of letting all of my excuses win, but I am very proud for never giving up on it. 

Putting something on the shelf doesn’t have to be the end of it. All of those knitting projects I’ve started and haven’t finished? They’re still waiting for me. These manuscripts I haven’t pushed out as quickly as I would have liked? The research and the data is no less important. The time with my husband I haven’t spent? Well, actually I have. We just haven’t done all of the things we would normally do. We’ve had a much more low-key relationship recently and that’s okay too. 

Beautiful things take time, and sometimes you need to allow yourself time to create beauty. Other times, you need to suck it up, put your big girl/boy pants on and go after it because time keeps moving forward whether you’re working on your projects or not!

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

Title: The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

Author: Kelly Harms 

Rating: 5/5 stars

Summary: Single mom of two adolescents, Amy Byler takes off to New York for a librarian conference just as her ex-husband, John, returns from Hong Kong to spend time with the kids. Amy eventually spends the summer in New York rather than her Pennsylvania home and her adventures (“Momspringa!”) are catalogued for us readers.

Best: I loved the way every chapter started with an entry from Cori’s (Ann’s daughter) summer reading journal. I appreciated the alternative insight, as well as the wise-beyond-her-years insight of an adolescent. It was truly my favorite part of the novel to listen to (when I was on audio) or read (when I was on my Kindle). 

Worst: I don’t really think there was a worst part to this novel. I felt like the story was well-developed and flowed easily. The only “complaint” I have is that I didn’t feel like every character was well-developed. Although they all appeared throughout the novel (with the exception of the blind dates), it felt like something was missing. For example, at no point before the last 5% or so of the book, the race of the female characters was revealed. It seemed out of place and somewhat unnecessary that late in the game. 

Favorite Quote: “Amish rumspringa ends with a big decision. Go home or never turn back. I’m not sure how your momspringa is any different.” This quote resonated with me because I feel like the novel was written in such a way (perhaps intentionally) that it didn’t seem like a big decision was really coming. Amy was just out having fun and was going to go back to her children and her job when it was time and that would be that. At this point in the novel, Amy finally realized how unrealistic that was and sprang into a frenzied, illogical form of action.