With the last blogpost published more than a year ago I guess the time is right for an update. So here it is :)

Although I shamelessly stole the title of this post from a very nice book, it’s not about an extended family travel. I like how the meaning of ”sabbatical” is described in Wikipedia as “any extended absence in the career of an individual in order to achieve something”. Family sabbatical in my case is about an extended absence in the career and about a family.

And, to clarify the context a bit, I should add that my youngest daughter, Emily, was born half a year ago. I planned to blog about it, but lots of things happened then, so those of you who are not connected to me in person or on a Facebook had probably missed it. Well, it’s better late than never :)

I combined being a mother of a little kid with work long enough to find out that I didn’t enjoy the combination. I feel that’s I’ve got far enough professionally to take a break from it to focus on the other side of the equation – my family. I have no idea how long my “sabbatical” will be. I guess until I get a sense of mastery at the homefront, get bored with it or get a professional challenge hard to resist. So far it’s far from it – there is enough food for thought, challenges and learning.

I also feel that I’m about ready to get back to blogging as thinking in public, but I’m still trying to figure out the details. Given the legacy of this blog I’m not sure what would make more sense – remodeling it to fit my current interests and loosing focus (even more :) or just opening another blog and crossposting here on specific topics.

It’s hard starting after a break – there are way too many stories to tell and way too many thoughts that came in between. So I start somewhere.

I had a burnout – going on and off after my PhD defense and not very obvious behind the usual “not feeling normal” during my pregnancy. But eventually it came to the surface and things are slowly getting better. Between other things that means less time online (and mainly lurking :) and much more time making things with my hands (rather then typing and talking :).

And, of course, we had Anna. With her all the background thinking and feeling about “work, us and our kids” surfaced again. Only this time I didn’t have an excuse of having a PhD to finish, so I had to deal with it, making choices that I had to make to stay true to myself (like extending my maternity leave to the maximum possible).

And, with Alexander approaching school age, it was also a time to rethink all thoughts I had about learning and education from a very personal perspective. It’s much easier to think and write about learning as what it could be or learning as “this is how I want to learn”, but practicing what you preach when it comes to your own kids is far more difficult. Especially since you easily bump into lots of real constraints of the society you belong to.

The process is still on the way, but a few things are clear so far:

- I’m leaving work. I’m pretty sure I want to be active professionally, but I have to figure out a different way to do it. (Some say that a burnout is a signal that something is out of balance pretty badly :)

- Time to reinvent life to fit our kids there. Not as inconvinience or as a a well-fenced part, but as an integral part of how things work. In a short term that means being a mother more than everything else and focusing on the local physical world more than paying attention to the global network.

- Unschooling as a shortcut name for educational trajectory we find important for our kids and figuring out what does it mean in practice. May be a bit cryptic right now, but there is lots in the pipeline and I just have to figure out how to put it into words. Funny to think that I started this blog from an “edublogging” angle, then moved to all other topics, but now it feels that I’ll be back where I started very soon.

They grow so fast.

Of course I knew it. But to know, theoretically, and to feel time slipping away from you are two different things.

The box with baby clothes, first sizes, just-in-case-there-will-be-one-more, is almost ready. And there is that first dress that doesn’t fit anymore. I just can’t put it in the box – not yet. May be it can linger in a drawer for a little bit longer, stretching the time that slips away so fast. May be…

Those who talk to me now know that the question of going back to work is around. With Alexander that was about this time when I started to work again. This time is different – I’m not ready yet. Work is tempting and taking longer time away from it is a bit scary, but when I look at the dress and things fall into their places.

I’m on maternity leave, which this time happens to coincide with a strong need to sort out offline things (like accumulated mess in the house, nothing too scary :))), so I’m quiet pretty much everywhere online.

If I get to online backlogs I might post some work-related things here, but in the coming few months the chances are pretty low that I’ll engage in much of professional conversations (unless it’s about managing work-life balance with little kids around :)

I never know when it’s time to tell personal news online and how far it actually makes sense to tell them explicitly instead of letting people to figure it out by themselves by picking up signals here and there… Anyway, in case you haven’t heard yet: another kid is on the way – I will be on maternity leave from the beginning of May.

The fun of anticipating and preparing for a new arrival comes together with challenges of figuring out how to combine it with my professional life, especially given that I just started figuring out what and how I actually want to do after my post-PhD dip.

And it’s more difficult when the first time – now I knowing what being a parent actually means, how much (or little ;) you can actually do work-wise when you free time is not as stretchable as it used to be, how precious is the time when they are so little and how fast it flies. I know that getting back to work after the usual three months is tough, especially now, when I don’t have the PhD finishing line in sight, that I’ll have a couple of seasons when going to a conference would be a big challenge, and don’t even get me started on the long-term issues of combining work and motherhood (we have an extremely inflexible Dutch school system on the horizon)…

Well, there are still three months to go and lots of fun things to do work-wise. I’ll eventually figure out how to make the equation work, but at the meantime would appreciate your thoughts and pointers to success stories (especially those about women who managed to have it all :)))

While going through the hard times of finishing my PhD dissertation I joked about the time after it, suggesting that I might go into the symptoms similar to the people who retire and don’t know what to do with their life then. Well, I should know better what to joke about :)

Now, waiting for the PhD committee to react on my work and preparing for the PhD defense I see shrunken horizons expand: once the PhD is in the past and I’m free to do whatever I want to do, what that would be?

There are multiple parts to it. The first one is about the place for work in my life. As I read The 4-Hour Workweek or The Family Sabbatical Handbook I keep wondering how to combine the work I want to do with all other things I want to do as well. And, following parenting parts of the blogoshpere brings enough examples of alternative work-life balance scenarios that are family-centred (e.g. the one of Angelina Hart that travels the world with her daughters and produces The Little Travellers DVDs).

The second part is about work. When I started the PhD I didn’t want to be a researcher, but wanted time and space for a research-based practice: being able to reflect, to explore conceptual world behind what happens day-to-day and then bring those insights back to work. What I didn’t realise that once you do a PhD you become a researcher :)

So now I’m torn between thinking of an academic career or of one of a practitioner. Of course it’s possible to live in both worlds at the same time, but as any other case of brokering it’s hard work (that comes with it’s own occupational hazards :)))

Finally, there are all those interesting topics to explore…

I always wanted to work part-time after having kids. However in my twenties that was just a professional target: to become good enough to be hired to do interesting things even if I don’t dedicate full working week to my work. I never knew how much having a day at home with Alexander would mean to me in practice.

Like now. Finishing my PhD is the worst ever experience of unbalancing work-life balance. As I wrote before, I don’t mind and even appreciate professional thinking and activities outside of work hours, and think of holidays and weekends as a time when I don’t have to work, but may very well do it if I feel like it.

Well, at the current stage my PhD is mainly what I have to do: I focus on finishing it, cutting off most of the fun (well, I do a few fun things like going to IR9 and Berlin6 recently, or occasionally reading a few blog posts or papers that have nothing to do with what I have to write). The worst thing is that PhD I-have-to-work spills off to evenings and weekends. Not that I work all my free time, I make sure I do things with family and friends, but it feels that I work all the time when I’m not busy with something necessary or social (I read a paper a while ago discussing a nice concept of pottering – this is exactly what I miss right now).

And then comes a day like yesterday. I went swimming with Alexander and admired how good he was (usually he goes with Robert, so I only get to hear the stories), sleept when he did, recovering from travel and writing induced sleep deprivation, was outside feeding animals, playing with sand, collecting acorns, getting warm in a shopping centre and then cycling to another park when it was already dark to wake up sleeping sheep to give them acorns and to look at Luna (one of a few Russian words he says) between the trees… We made pancakes together and played with the Lego train (again!), read books from my own childhood, called papa to say good night and looked at the moon once again before going to bed…

The whole day I kept feeling how precious and important it was to be like that, grounded in everyday details, feeling life as an experience, and not as the time ticking towards the moment the next chapter is due. When I wanted to work less to spend time with hypothetical kids I didn’t even come close realising how important that would be for staying sane.

Those moments when Alexander is sick are probably most difficult in trying to combine motherhood and working on my PhD. The sleepless nights, when he wakes up every hour and needs something from me are not only tough by themselves, but they make writing the day after close to impossible, because my brain refuses to function.

Well, it seems that I might have discovered a solution: instead of struggling to write the day after the night like that, I might well write at night (taking breaks to help Alexander when he wakes up) and recover during the day when there are usually more people who can help.

Don’t know if it’s sustainable, but at least this night it works :)

A few months ago I participated in a cultural probes study of communication at work. One of the things I had to do was writing about my ideal day at work. Found it in email today and thought of reposting – could be interesting to look back at it in 10 years :)

***

Ideally I would have a teleportation device. Something that would bring me closer to far away people I work with. Of course, we have all technology-mediated ways of working, all presence-awareness-ambient-intimacy tools, but nothing could beat having a lunch together. Even tea/coffee would do. Something “around work”, not actually working on things (this we can manage in technology-mediated ways), but bits and pieces of connecting at more personal level in between.

I would also have a little babel fish in my ear, so I would understand those speaking other languages, without becoming stressed myself or making them uncomfortable.

And I would have a “Mary Poppins” bag – I’d put my office stuff in there – books, papers, gadgets. Then I’d teleport to nice locations and work there, taking breaks to do little sightseeing or to taste local food while continuing work conversations. I’d also have a foldable “awareness” screen in the bag. It would show in some easy to decode visual way when people I work with or those in more extended professional network do something relevant to my own interests.

And my laptop will be sand-proof with perfectly visible things on the screen while outside and it would fold to almost nothing. And it would work from sun or wind or rain or movement of the train and would have internet connection even in a forest.

Or, if I have to be more practical… I don’t know… I’m working on changing things I don’t like and try to be patient with those I can’t change. I like having an office where I can put all my stuff around and work without too many interruptions. I like having opportunities to socialise if I feel like it. I could definitely do with better food, like a nice café downstairs with wifi, whiteboards and a projector. I’d book it for all my meetings and spend some other time with my laptop, piece of cake and a cappuccino.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/12/17.html#a1966; comments are here.

Tuesday is my “mama’s day” – formally I work 4 days a week now to have one day to take care of Alexander. I thought that would be a good day to blog about things that are important, but not extremely work-related.

This Tuesday I’d like to contribute to the world breastfeeding week by sharing my own tips for combining breastfeeding and work.

Reading tips

• Read some books on breastfeeding. Ideally before you need them, but it also helps to have one in hands in case you need information later on.
• If you only can buy one book on breastfeeding and you are (planning to be) a working mom, get Milk memos (full review that got me into buying the book). It’s funny, sweet and practical (e.g. it had a section on bottle-strike that I couldn’t find in other breastfeeding books I read). Besides that the story is based on what has been written by breastfeeding mothers in a shared notebook at work, so I can even pretend that it fits my research readings as some strange kind of employee blogging :)
• Read breastfeeding blogs – pick up the one you like at one of breastfeeding carnivals.

Early days tip (from our kraamzorg). Buy a jar of jam (the cheapest one, without seeds and pieces of fruit), put a couple of spoons in a little plastic bag, freeze. When in need for a cold compress, take out of the freezer, put a thin cloth around it and apply. Because of sugars it doesn’t freeze solid, but turns into a cold gel (also handy for all other occasions).

Feeding in public tip. Buy (or make) a couple of breastfeeding outfits – they make a lot of difference by giving you an opportunity to feed discreetly, without any discomfort of being cold or trying to cover. The good ones seem to be expensive, but it pays back (I tried several, but there are two that I couldn’t do without – plain black Anna Cecilia T-shirt and Glamourmom tanktop; if buying in NL, check Prettymum).On those occasions when I took Alexander to work-related events I was especially happy with having that special “gear”: next to being plain practical, being able to feed him while listening to a presentation gave me a very special feeling that motherhood and work could be compatible after all.

Getting back to work tips

• Know your rights. Those things are different between countries (Netherlands is pretty good in this respect). Breastfeeding facilities (is there a private place to express milk? a fridge to keep it cold?), time you are allowed to take, etc. Knowing that not only helps in any conversations with your employer, but also gives some idea of what resources should be available in other organisations in case you have to be at an external meeting long enough to need them.
• Check at work if you can have extra flexible schedule for the first few weeks. I ended up working half days (to let Alexander get used to daycare gradually), going to the daycare to feed him while the whole bottle business didn’t work and working at home on the days Robert was babysitting, so I could just go downstairs to feed Alexander and then get back to work. Being able to do all that made the transition to work much easier for everyone.

Bottle strike tip [this is when your baby refuses to drink your milk from a bottle]. I guess there are no silver bullets here. What helped in our case? Ladies in our daycare. Not only they had a lot of experience of bottle-feeding babies in different circumstances, but they also tried feeding Alexander from different types of bottles, so eventually they found the one he liked (this is pretty difficult to do at home unless you want to spend a lot of money).

Expressing and storing milk tips

• Invest in a breastpump (get one indicated for “daily use”). I’ve got two used ones from friends and I could feel the difference. I use the better one (old version of Medela pump in style) regularly at work and (since I have the luxury of having two) simpler Medela Mini Electric plus very occasionally at home.
• Get some spare parts. When at work I don’t want to lose too much time by washing and cleaning pumping gear, so I’ve got packages of clean shields for every pumping round and wash everything at once at home.
• If your baby doesn’t drink as much as you express and you have to freeze the leftovers, think of using breastmilk storage bags (e.g. those by Medela or Lansinoh) for that to avoid the risk of having all your bottles in the freezer. They also take less space than bottles if you have to travel and make a perfect back-up stock in the office in a case you forget some bottles (it actually happened to me).
• Ziplock bags are great for storing sterilised parts (and lots of other things too :)
• And, finally, if you need a motivator to make expressing milk easier you might go a bit geeky by starting a slide-slow of your baby’s photos on whatever digital device is around (I run slide-show of Alexander’s photos at Flickr on my desktop :)

Some resources that might help are at del.icio.us/mathemagenic/breastfeeding.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/08/07.html#a1930; comments are here.