What to Expect When You’re Expecting…In Lab

It’s hard to get more literal in the BenchLife channel than actually creating a Life while at the Bench!  For many women, the decision to have a child while still a postdoc brings up more questions than an undergraduate summer student…  We turned to new mom and former MIT postdoc Joanne Gibson to find out about her experience balancing pregnancy and the lab.

How long were you a postdoc before you decided to have a child?

3 years.

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Was the decision to have a kid a difficult one professionally?  Were there professional consequences you worried about?

No. I’d always wanted to have a child and I knew I’d do it regardless of where my career was at. I hadn’t always imagined taking 2+ years out of work but because we were in a financial position to do so, it was a no-brainer for me. Besides, I’d spent 4 and 5 years on projects in the lab, I thought this new project deserved at least a couple of years. However, I made this decision knowing that it would affect my career path. Of course taking 2+ years out would slow my career, but I was OK with going back to a part-time job in a couple of years in a lesser capacity. If someone is more determined to win the Nobel prize (or even just become a professor), then this approach wouldn’t work for them.

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Upon finding out you were pregnant, what were the first work-related things that went through your mind?

Worrying about chemical exposure. I think one of the first people I told about the pregnancy (even before my family) was the EHS co-ordinator. Also, how I could wind up my project and what I could reasonably expect to get done in the time I had left (as everything takes so much longer in research than we plan!).

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How stressful was telling the boss?

Not at all. I don’t think I’d tolerate a work environment where I was made to feel stressed out about reproducing.

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Would you recommend a strategy for other women facing the same conversation?

I would say just tell the boss straight up. Pregnant women have rights and they can’t be discriminated against because they’ll be taking maternity leave. We once interviewed a pregnant woman who wanted to start a postdoc 3 months after her child was born (a totally reasonable thing to line up a postdoc beforehand I thought) and one of the other postdocs in the lab pointed out to us that she was pregnant (it wasn’t yet obvious) and said “see, that’s why you don’t hire women”. Don’t stand for discrimination with regards to pregnancy. Pregnancies are apparently important for the maintenance of the human race.

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Did you worry about specific chemical exposures in the lab?  If so, how did you minimize them?

Yes. I went over everything I used with the EHS co-ordinator. I also told the 2 people in the lab who occupied the benches closest to me as they were working with neurotoxins and radioactivity. I did a lot more work in the fumehood. You have a heightened sense of smell when you’re pregnant so this served me well! I could smell a mile off if someone had disposed of a pipette tip that had been used with beta-mercaptoethanol. Luckily, most of the people I worked with were very careful, so my stress level over this matter wasn’t huge although I became paranoid at times. A healthy level of paranoia is necessary though to keep mother and child safe. Also, don’t worry about looking paranoid to your colleagues: you’re not making a cake, you’re making a human. It’s important.

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Are there any resources you might recommend for women to help manage their safety while in lab?

Utilize the knowledge of the EHS staff. They really went out of their way for me. You can talk to your ObGyn, but they’re only going to know a little bit about the well-known and documented teratogens. I think the EHS person will know more about this.

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What was the biggest impact pregnancy had on your daily workflow?

I was more forgetful. Luckily I had no morning sickness. Towards the end (last 1 or 2 months) I was very tired.

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How did you deal with this issue?

To deal with the forgetfulness I wrote more down. I wrote EVERYTHING down.

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Pregnancy is said to affect the memory – did you find this to be true and did it affect your ability to work?

Yes and yes. See above. I could store samples one afternoon and completely forget where I’d put them by the next morning. I would write it in a notebook that I’d keep on my desk. I didn’t want to write the most basic stuff in my workbook as I was worried that someone would read it later on and think I was a bit simple!

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How close to your due date did you work in the lab?  Would you recommend that to others, or in hindsight would you have left sooner or later?

I left about 2 weeks before my due date. This was a good amount of time to rest up for the big day and finish getting organized. I was also getting to a stage where I was too tired to work full days.

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Were there specific times in the pregnancy that were more difficult than others to be working in the lab?  Why?

Only the very end of the third trimester because of tiredness.  I guess the early days were difficult in that I didn’t want to tell everyone until I was at a certain stage of the pregnancy (ie the end of the first trimester), yet I wanted everyone to be really extra careful with chemicals (but couldn’t tell them why).

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You timed the end of your postdoc with the birth of your daughter.  Based on your experience as a new mom, could you imagine going back right now?

NO!

The first 3 months are the hardest with a new baby and a lot of people go back after 3 months, so I guess it would be more manageable by then. I can also understand that people want to go back to work for a break from the chaos and also the mundane tasks. I miss science definitely, but because I wasn’t in the middle of a project that I was passionate about it is easier for me to take this time. It was a good time for me to take time out and re-evaluate where I wanted to go with my career.

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If you were to be going back, are there things new moms could be doing to make the transition easier for themselves?

I don’t think there would be time for reading papers, but it’s important to make sure your schedule will work for mother and baby. Especially if breastfeeding. A new Mom should make sure she works in a breastfeeding friendly environment so she can take breaks for pumping. If it’s not breastfeeding friendly then she needs to make the appropriate complaints to sort that out and not let her babies potentially suffer because of this. So I guess, making sure you’re on the same page as your boss with these things is the most important thing. The transition into motherhood is much greater than the transition back to work and this needs to take priority. If the boss has family then he/she is much more likely to be understanding.

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