Washing formula bottles. Running with a stroller and my baby. Publishing my graduate school paper.

One of the things that is hard about being single - I have found - is that the things that feel good to do - routinely cooking, doing the dishes promptly, keeping the house tidy, not sleeping too late to often - you and only you have to make happen. You have to generate all of your own momentum in your home life. I struggled with this in 2023 and 2024. And I coped largely by leaning on work and the structure that a commute and a 9-5ish workday as an external source of accountability. But often this strategy left me resentful of a job that I really love.  I didn’t feel great about my life functioning relying on my job.

Now, since having Doris and especially since January, my life has a routine that is built around first Doris and then (once I went back to work in February) work. A crucial part of this routine is that after I put her to bed, I need to wash the five bottles of the day, the formula pitcher, and almost always make new formula. Since I try hard to keep food related sink washing and bottles related washing separate, the first step is to wash the food dishes that have accumulated during the day. Then, with warm soapy water, I wash the bottles and their associated parts. How long this all takes depends on how many food dishes there are to deal with, but it’s not super short and it has to happen every evening or in the morning there will be a very grumpy hungry baby and on a week day I’ll be even later to work than usual … But it feels good to get it done, even on a hard day, it’s something concrete that I’ve accomplished. And sometimes, afterwords I even grab my vacuum and vacuum!

Post first attempted rainy run (rain cover has lots of vents for airflow).

 Another important component to my mental health and routine right now is running with Doris (running and pushing her in the jogging stroller). The guideline for how old a baby should be before jogging with a forward-facing stroller is six months. Doris turned six months in the middle of May, and we went on our first run a few days before. It was not a big success - I had attached the front wheel in the wrong orientation so the stroller in locked position didn’t go straight AND it was raining, but we at least had tried! And I’m a big believer that some start in some way is a win. For the next run I had reoriented the front wheel, and it worked much better! It is hard work to push a stroller - especially up hills - but it felt so good to finally run again!

Sweaty mom! Happy baby!

Ever since having Doris and escaping from the hospitals, I have been exploring the less busy streets of my neighborhood. It started with short walks with the bassinet stroller on the street behind my house. Over Christmas, my brother and mother discovered a path to the paved trail a mile from my house that doesn’t require walking on busy and fast moving Stadium Drive. This was a thrilling realization.  The Warren Creek Trail is 0.75 miles long, connects to the sidewalk on Stadium Drive, and passes through a newly updated playground!! Since moving to my house, I had lamented that I was close yet so far from this park, but all of a sudden it was within striking distance for a jog or longer walk. My neighborhood isn’t at first glance walking friendly, it doesn’t have sidewalks and gets some through traffic, but it turns out that between the wide well paved streets, connecting quieter streets, and the accessibility of the trail, and the presence of plenty of other people moving on foot, it is actually great for jogging!

On June 2nd, almost four years after I presented an earlier version at my PhD defense, my second first author paper from graduate school was published! I started working on this paper in March 2020 when we were sent home from lab near the beginning of the Covid pandemic. I worked on the project intensely over the next seventeen months. I was able to defend a thesis that I was proud of because of that work. In August 2021 the manuscript was posted on bioRxiv and submitted to a journal. The paper was reviewed by Cell Reports. Both of these things were very important to me getting my job at Duke in early summer 2022.

Getting the manuscript all the way published has taken another almost four years. We got reviews back on the initial submission the day before my father’s memorial service in October 2021. I worked with colleagues to collect an entire third replicate of the data in response to a negative review in November and December. The next step was to integrate this third replicate of data with the first two replicates. I had not done the initial analysis anticipating future replicates, and thus this integration was highly non-trivial. In part because it was daunting, and in part because I was focused on other priorities like publishing a different paper, applying for jobs in the Research Triangle area, and moving to the Research Triangle area, I made effectively no progress on the data integration in 2022. Then, once I moved to my second apartment in Durham in January 2023, I started to make slow, sporadic progress. I spent a lot of time distressed that I wasn’t making more progress, but I’m also really glad that I didn’t let it keep me from pursuing other goals in my life.

In December a co-author reached out to encourage me to finish the revisions and finish them soon. I had thought that if I didn’t resubmit the manuscript before Doris was born it would never get published, but I realized that it was actually returning to work that was the deadline. In late December my mother returned to Princeton, and I was home alone with Doris for January. (With some very welcome visits from friends and family.) I worked on the manuscript every evening, and a few times paid our postpartum doula to come during the day so that I could make even more progress. I got very lucky that Doris is a good sleeper which made this possible. I also really felt a need to honor my maternity leave with respect to not doing paid work and working on preparing the resubmission allowed me to have a scientific and creative outlet during this period. My mom returned in February to do some full time Doris care while I transitioned back to work, and that also allowed me to make a last push during two weekends. In the end we did a new submission to a new journal where we received positive reviews. The manuscript was accepted on May 23rd.

I am so happy that this paper is finally published, and I am proud of myself for persevering, for holding on to my goal to get it published. There is more to share about the journey of this paper, especially those initial seventeen months. Publishing the paper makes it easier to reflect on and process that period, and I plan to write about it more.