It's been a while since I posted. I noticed a few people added me as a friend lately, so I thought it was about time to speak up. I believe the last time I wrote, I had just had my first miscarriage. I later had a second. My doctor informed me that this was not uncommon for early pregnancy. I am now at 4.5 months of my third pregnancy. Everything looks good so far. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

In other news, I am about to graduate from the University of California Berkeley with a PhD in physics. I decided to go ahead and apply for faculty jobs, which is typically only done after an additional few years of a post doc position. I've gotten one offer so far and have the potential for more. I'm pretty excited about my future as a research professor.

So, I had a miscarriage. It wasn't fun. In fact, it was rather painful both physically and emotionally. Luckily, I found out from my OBGYN, instead of one my own in India (I'm about to go there for a conference). And no permanent damage was done.

I started to feel better about the whole thing after I started telling people and found out just how common it is. In fact, nearly everyone I talked to that has kids said they had one or more miscarriages. It still sucks to have a miscarriage, but it doesn't feel quite so bad when you start to realize that this is just the way nature does it. It's no reflection on you. This is part of my reason for writing about this experience. I want to get the word out. Until this happened to me, I had no idea how common this is and felt pretty bad about it until I learned. I mean, my doctor told me it was common, but that's not the same as finding out from nearly everyone you talk to. When your doctor says it, you worry that they are just trying to make you feel better.

So yes, miscarriages are terribly common. My doctor said some women never realize they are pregnant because they have a miscarriage early and around their time of the month. He also said that most of these miscarriages are just due to missing or extra genetic information. This means that if the baby had made it, it wouldn't have been healthy anyway. In fact, having this kind of miscarriage is actually a sign of a healthy baby making body because it knows when to stop and try again when things aren't going right.

Having said all of this, it's still hard. I spent nearly a full week feeling pretty useless. We found out the day before Thanksgiving. It was a crappy time to find out, but at least I had some holiday and didn't have to worry about trying to get back to work right away. Should you find yourself in a similar position, I highly recommend taking a few days off. You won't be able to focus anyway and people are pretty understanding if you can bring yourself to tell them.

So, my husband and I are still young and we'll try again soon. They say the best thing to do when you get thrown off the horse is to get right back on the saddle. Of course, your body needs a little time to recover. My doctor recommended no intercourse for 10 days afterward. We tried other options, but my body just wasn't ready yet. Once I started getting close to the big O, I began to experience some pain, which of course ruined it anyway. Besides, you won't be fertile again for about seven weeks. 

I would be happy to discuss this experience further with anyone who would like to. I know it's a scary subject and it's always nice to hear from someone who has been through it.

Tags: common, damage, genetic, miscarriage, obgyn, orgasm, pain, percentage, permanent, pregnancy, pregnant
Current Mood: disappointed

My research takes place in a lab were we grow and add metal on to samples. I then characterize the properties of these samples to figure out how to best use them in industry. In this process, a fair amount of chemicals are used. Naturally, I wanted to know if it was safe to use these chemicals while pregnant. I was a little frustrated by the lack of information available. Sure, I could and did read the MSDS reports that are required for a lab to have for every chemical in use. These are filled with all of the possible effects one would expect from being exposed to these chemicals, but there wasn't anything specific towards what one should do if pregnant. I next tried to find more information online. This was surprisingly unsuccessful. You would think that many others would have gone through this experience too.

So, here is a little of what I learned. Pregnant women should stay away from acetone, often used in cleaning samples and taking away things like silver paint. You want to avoid contact and smelling fumes which can cause birth defects and increase brain damage. If you need to use this chemical, you should get someone else to do the job for you. I've had to do this a couple times already and my labmates have been very understanding. Hopefully, they will continue to be so understanding when I'm much further along. Methanol is also unsafe. Apparently, alcohols should also be avoided.

Tags: acetone, alcohol, chemicals, chemistry, isopropanal, lab, laboratory, methanol, pregnancy, pregnant
Current Mood: annoyed

For Halloween, I watched an episode of The Reaper and worked on my new social networking website, WEBillions.com. Fun and productive!

Tags: design, halloween, social network, startup, writer's block
Current Mood: artistic

So, I have to admit that my morning sickness hasn't been too bad yet. I totally expect that to change. My mom said she was sick for 5 months when she had me! No wonder I'm an only child.

However, combine morning sickness with nerves (say about giving a talk which I did today) and that's another story. The talk went well, but the hour or so before the talk was rather painful. I am particularly happy I didn't eat much before the talk or it would have been even worse. Though, I definitely gobbled down my dinner when I got home. It might be time for dessert now [looking in freezer].

Tags: morning sickness, nerves, nervous, pregnancy, public speaking
Current Mood: hungry

Finding the time and learning to balance it between school, a new internet business, and free time is not easy. As I said in my last post, I really couldn't do all of this and still be sane unless I really felt passionate about my internet venture. My sense of accomplishment makes me a lot more productive than I might be otherwise, and I feel  like I don't need nearly as much free time to keep me happy. I treat the business as a hobby.

That being said, there is still some time management involved. The research for my PhD sometimes requires some odd and long hours. You might notice that it is 3am my time. Unfortunately, in my line of research, this is unavoidable. So, I've learned to make the most of it. Any time I know that I'm going to have to work longer than 16 hours straight, I don't plan on getting a lot of other tasks done. I figure, in order to stay focused on the things I HAVE to do for those hours, I need to make sure I take lots of breaks and do other things that won't burn me out. For example, since I love working on my business so much, I often bring a marketing book to read, write in my starting a business blog, or find other ways to advertising and promote my goal setting site. Also, naps are important, since my pregnancy makes me more tired than I was before. I take a sleeping bag with me to work. Sure, I get a few odd comments about it, but I can tell people are impressed by my work ethic.

Besides these odd occasions  when  I have to do research for so long,  I try to keep school and business as separate as possible. Since I sometimes have crazy hours for research, I try to keep my more typical school hours during the regular business day. I come in, I focus on only work as much as possible without going insane. I try to be as productive as possible so that I can take off at 5pm and not feel like I didn't get enough done for the day. I must say it is tempting to gossip with my coworkers about the latest pregnancy symptoms for long periods of time. I try to keep this to a minimum. In fact, my less enthusiastic coworkers likely thank me for it. We pregnant women often get a little wrapped up in our own importance of being a new mother.  :)

This separation of school and work isn't always easy, particularly since my husband often wants instant feedback on his latest website achievement in the last hour--and it's important that he gets feedback, just not when I need to be focusing on something else. On days when this is particularly bad, we'll often take a business lunch to plan out details of the website. This is a time when I'm not really expected to be thinking about school (and could use the break from it frankly) and can simultaneously get some stuff done on the site.

The real trick to all of this is not letting everything overwhelm you. Sure, there is a lot to do and you'll get to it eventually. You can only do what you can do. You have to take some free time or you'll go insane. Take it one task at a time without losing track of your big picture.

Tags: career balance, family, focus, internet business, pregnancy, productivity, startup, time management
Current Mood: sleepy

So, I found out on Monday that I'm pregnant! It started with a faint blue line on a home pregnancy test and a follow-up blood test. My husband Paul and I got married in June of this year and we were trying, so we are very excited!

I am a physics graduate student whose has recently taken on a side project of a new internet business. Many people seem to think that you can't do physics (or maybe even school in general) and have a family. I totally disagree and plan to prove it to you by giving you updates to my progress.

In fact, I asked many mentors before making this decision when the best time to have kids was. They all agreed that graduate school is a great time. There is a bit more flexibility than out in the real world. You might say, well, there you go. You are more flexible than most and that's why you can have a child. Well, don't forget about my new business. After grad school and the business, there is enough time to eat, bathe, exercise, and sleep...sometimes. And certainly not much left after all of that. So let me say that it wouldn't be possible for me to do all three if I didn't feel passionately about all of them. I try to look at my business as a hobby and thus I spend my "free time" on that. I highly recommend finding a job that doesn't feel like a job. It's all about figuring out what you are passionate about. What could you do every day and still feel great about? What would do even if you didn't need the money? Sure, I could use the money (particularly with the little one coming), but I believe I would be doing something at least very similar even if I didn't need it.

So let me tell you what my passion is (other than physics). I like to mentor. I like to help people figure out what their goals are and how to accomplish them. I decided to turn this into an internet business. Basically, it's a social network (like MySpace or Facebook) with a theme aimed at giving people a fun and interactive way to think about what they want to do with their lives. We haven't launched yet, but we've put up some fun surveys designed to get people thinking along the right direction. Please feel free to check this out at WEBillions.com. The more information we get, the better we'll know how to serve the needs of the public. To learn more about starting a business, see my other blog. To learn more about me, see my personal website.

So, no bad pregnancy side effects yet. I don't feel sick and not too tired yet. I did notice that I am more sensitive to smells. That probably means I'll get sick soon, but I'm just happy that I am not yet. I am only three weeks in after all. That probably means an early July baby--maybe fourth of July? My mom told me that I would be obligated to call the baby Firecracker or Sparkler in that case. I think we will probably stick with more traditional names. Right now, we are thinking Isabel Marie and Colin David. We will find out the sex of the baby when it's possible, but that will be a while yet.

I'll keep you posted about how things go!

Tags: career balance, family, focus, graduate school, insanity, internet business, physics, pregnancy, productivity, school, startup, student, time management
Current Mood: bouncy