Game over

The Empire State Building is green and red, two colors Zoe would find boring, but she is not here to complain. Instead I'm hitting the two week mark of her absence where I start really feeling it in my heart. Her pictures around the apartment, her toys still scattered a bit between the bedroom and the shelf in the living room reminding me that she was just here and will be back again. In another two months. Not for long, because her dad informed me today that he wants her to be back in Europe for at least two weeks before she starts school so she can get over her jetlag. Not like something we could talk about or agree about. "I want her back in Stockholm by x date". I am not sure exactly when this whole parenting thing turned from two people trying to agree about what is best for Zoe, to demands and requirements. It is honestly the weirdest thing. And it only adds fuel to my hurting heart, missing her, missing hugging her, chatting to her, reading long chapter books before bedtime and rubbing her back as she falls asleep. She is and will always be my little baby. And being without her is like missing a piece of myself.

If it wasn't enough that I miss her, my life is as messy as it could ever be. Having my visa cancelled out of nowhere was nothing compared to this. On top of having a major life decision in front of me, I'm responsible for coordinating some conference work that will take about 30 hours to do this weekend and be a major chore this summer. And then I have all the work at my second job, which is actually my main job at the moment since they are the only ones providing me with a salary. On top of that I pay too much attention to someone who doesn't deserve it, someone who can't help pay attention to me either, but who should know better. I just want to move on. I just want to have made this decision, to be on the other side, next to Zoe, having pizza on a weeknight and discuss how the stars were made and why her friend in school doesn't speak another language.

I keep concluding that it's game over. That I have been defeated by circumstances and really bad life choices such as who I decided to have a child with. It makes me depressed and sad and incapable of working on anything serious for a while. But then I remember my promise to myself. That I'll never give up. That I *will* one day have that professor job in the US, no matter how much I have to sacrifice. Except I'll not sacrifice any time with Zoe. And this is where I fail again. And again. As her dad satisfactory said to me last time he picked her up: "I have my research group now, this is what I always wanted". I'm so happy for him.

Getting to everyday life

Muppet show at the conference

When Zoe arrived about a month ago we went straight to a conference and spent a week in a hotel, seeing friends, having fun and me taking Zoe to sessions now that she is capable of sitting still and simply watch a show while I listen to the talks. I did realize that Muppet Show was not the best thing for her to watch because she started waving her hands and moving in her chair when the songs began, to the amusement and distraction of the other attendees. But besides that, I even managed to ask a few questions of presenters while she was there. When we got back to New York our everyday life started again, full on with acting and dancing class and a new babysitter twice a week. By Thursday the first week she was crying the whole way to school because she hurt her foot, hadn't had time to get proper breakfast and was still jetlagged. Instead of sending her to afterschool I picked her up myself and simply brought her back to work with me. I felt so sorry for her for putting her through this and just wanted to sit down and spend an uninterrupted day with her, just her and me. Unfortunately having 3 jobs to make ends meet does not allow for me to do that much.

After the show with the cast

Getting to an everyday life when changing context every two months is hard. And although I try my best to smooth the transition, making sure I take her back to the exact same places, lifestyle and people, it is never ideal. But she is incredibly adaptable and brave, and after a week she was back to her usual popular Zoe-self who is greeted by her three best friends at school every day, who excitedly tells me everything about her day when I pick her up. She asks that I never move from our tiny one-bedroom, view-to-the-Empire-State-Building apartment and she asks for sushi from her usual places. By now she is having a blast, having play dates, hanging out with our friends (Easter break brought three friends to New York that we got to hang out with, one a bit of a surprise). We have seen two musical shows, been to one museum and had a weekend in Montreal to visit a friend of mine who has a daughter Zoe's age. All while making this into our everyday life.

Jumping on hotel beds

"You are my favorite travel buddy", I whispered into Zoe's ear after we had settled into the shared ride at exactly 2:50am, taking off for Newark airport. She had woken up immediately as I gently touched her, put on her skirt and sweater herself (she had slept in the rest of her clothes to make this easier), and taken down her little owl suitcase from 4th floor herself. Without as much as a whinge. We chatted about houses and cars and lights as the driver took us to our way-too-early-but-cheap flight.

Zoe and I are off to a conference in Vancouver where I have a paper, and a workshop to attend. Since I'm alone with her in New York, I have no option but to bring her, which is also my preference. There are two simple reasons for why I like to take her 4000 miles across the country and pay close to a 1000 dollars for her to be with me: Firstly, I don't want to lose out on any time with her these days. With her dad wanting her 50% of the time, I am making the most of it, even if it means having to go home early from the conference dinner and see few actual research presentations. The other reason is that not only is she easy to travel with, she is simply a delight (to paraphrase my 90 year old aunt) to travel with. She hardly ever complains and sees everything as fun exploration and reminiscing with me because we have most likely been on that type of plane, in that specific airport and bought that type of airplane snack before. She cried exactly twice, once when she squeezed her finger in-between her suitcase handle and the suitcase, and once when I interrupted her and asked the shop assistant if they had a different type of sushi rolls. Zoe wanted to explain to me exactly what she wanted and I just overruled her, leading to her frustration. I apologized and we were good again. She got the sushi she wanted (we flew via SFO, which has a great sushi place where I have been many times) and we ran to the gate, boarding as the last people.

Onboard the first flight, she quickly fell asleep together with me, her cuddling up on my lap, me nodding most of the way. When we woke up the plane was shaking from turbulence and I hate that. The big secret about me, (and yes, I recognize the irony) is that I actually *hate* flying [blush]. I am just plain scared to fall down. This also feeds into the desire for me to always fly with Zoe because the thought becomes slightly more bearable that we should both fall down together. But Zoe held my hand and comforted me. She suggested we watch some tv on the iPad because that usually helped her, she said and we did. I was very relieved when we hit the ground safely.

On the second flight we reached a milestone. Normally, my attention has to be devoted mostly to her, even if she is watching cartoons or playing on her iPad, and if she is sleeping it is mostly on my lap, limiting my movement. This time, however, she watched cartoons (with my noise canceling headphones) so focused that I pulled out my computer and proceeded to write on a journal article that I'm working on at the moment. I managed to write almost a page, something I have never done on a plane with Zoe before.

We landed and walked the kilometer and a half from the gate to immigration where we had to take the non-resident queue. It took us 30-40 minutes to reach the front, which Zoe patiently waited out with only a bit of complaints. I cursed the officers and fellow passengers for not pulling out the mom traveling with two kids, one 1 1/2 year old who did NOT have 30 minute's patience. But obviously everyone in front of her felt it was more appropriate to listen to the little one crying for most of the time. Finally, it was our turn and I proudly walked up with our rainbow passports. "Where is her father", the young attractive officer asked. "New York", I answered shortly. "Do you have a letter from him?" I froze for a bit. I normally always travel with a letter, I make sure other people traveling with Zoe have a letter but this was just a short trip within the same continent and I had not even thought about bringing passports until two days before. I sighed. "You are actually the first one ever asking for that", I replied honestly and received the obvious "you should always travel with a letter" but after a few more questions he let us through. I joked with a friend later that I was now the child-smuggler.

Zoe jumped eagerly on the hotel bed as we finally got in and we both went to bed early after a long successful travel day.

The Zoe puzzle

I find myself in Amsterdam at a conference that is peripheral to my overall field but core to my research subject. I was invited to moderate a panel and happy to accept back when June seemed like far in the future and when plane ticket prices did not enter my mind*. But as always is the case when not planning well, it turned out that Zoe's dad had arranged work travel overlapping with my trip. We were never good communicating when we were together (in fact I think that is one of the reasons our relationship broke down, he had no idea how unhappy I was and I presumed he knew) and we are even worse as divided parents. So we end up in these chaotic situations of trying to patch together care for Zoe. Luckily a close friend of ours is able to help out. He is picking her up from daycare Thursday and spending Friday (which is midsummer, the most holy of the holidays in Sweden but a workday in all other European countries) with her. I fly back Friday evening after my panel and meet up with them Saturday. Zoe will have a great time and so with my friend hopefully.

Meanwhile I miss Zoe like crazy at the conference and wish I had declined the invitation.

*Plane ticket prices means a lot in my situation because although my own business travel is covered, Zoe's ticket to Copenhagen for care taking my my family is not. 

Sometimes you can have it all

My yearly main conference proved to be a bit of a puzzle this year in terms of Zoe and I have had many 'models' in mind, most of them involving me either finding some expensive full day child care in Paris or flying up to Copenhagen, missing a full day. The problem is that I have a committee meeting attached to the conference making this an 8 night long event. As much as Zoe loves her grandmother, and vice versa, the fact that my mom doesn't have child care in Copenhagen made it not really an option to drop her off there for all 8 days. My head was spinning and I was on the phone with my mom a while back when I explained the situation. "I'll come to Paris to pick up Zoe", she said as a matter of fact and I realized that would be the best solution: I wouldn't miss out on many activities, Zoe would only have to be in Copenhagen for 4 days and I could pick her up on my way back to Stockholm. Now the puzzle looks like this: I leave for Paris Friday. Zoe and her dad leaves for Paris Sunday, Zoe stays with me in Paris for two days. Then I take her to the airport Tuesday where my mom has 3 hours in-between flights, and I send them back up to Copenhagen. Saturday I fly back to pick up Zoe and Sunday we fly back to Stockholm. This was the perfect solution, I thought. Now hopefully all flights will be on time. Sometimes you really can have it all. 

Hungover mom

One reason why I love my job is because it is so flexible. After a fun night out celebrating a friend's successful PhD defense on Monday, I could stay home all day, picking up Zoe in the afternoon and just do nothing at night (okay, I'm also lucky that I have no immediate upcoming deadlines). She watched a few Pocoyo episodes too much for her own good but I could rest my head.

Today I'm working in a cafe trying to stitch together my next trip to a conference, in fact the main conference within my field. It looks like I will have to bring Zoe and then take a day off in the middle of the conference to fly Zoe to Copenhagen, flying back to the conference at night. Luckily I have enough frequent flyer miles that it can pay for most the cost. Part of me thinks this is insane but another part can see no other choice. I want at least part of a child-free conference where I can have fun and party (but hopefully not as much as the other night) but I also need to limit the child-care that I am asking for. Let's hope it will work and when I am in the middle of it, it probably won't be that bad. Zoe certainly has the flying down by now and probably won't mind flying three times in a week. 

Bring children to conferences

This was only my third time bringing Zoe to a conference because of our recent better options to drop her off with grandmother. But it was definitely the right time and the right conference. This one is a fairly small one with only 360 attendees, at least half which are core-participants of my research community and therefore "mommy's friends", as I explained to Zoe. It also meant that there were several other parent attendees who had brought their children. Five of the six children were between one and a half and almost three years old, two being a set of twins that Zoe has played with before and who she is very fond of.

We arrived at the hotel a day before so we had the chance to explore (this is a rule of mine, particularly when bringing Zoe, because of often unpredicted travel changes). After half a day going to the park with the twins to play, I realized that we were not going to be able to go much outside the hotel without a stroller. I had not brought one because of our extensive travel schedule but Zoe was now a bit too keen on being carried and my back does not do well with her lovely 34 pounds anymore. Luckily, at the local CVS, they had an orange with blue and green x'es and o'es umbrella stroller for $24.95, which I then 'rented', because obviously we could not bring it back home with us. Five days later I left it in the hotel room with a note asking them to give it to charity. It was worth every penny because I was now able to take a sleepy baby out for dinner and Zoe's dad took her to the Zoo with the twins one of the days.

This brings me to the reason why this conference was such a success: Zoe's dad was there and took her for a full day and half of the next one. When she was actually in and around the rooms of the conference we hung out with the other kids in a corner and played. She dealt well with my colleagues approaching her and talking to her. The only time I tried to take her with me to a session was the closing plenary. After talking to her for five minutes, explaining that she had to be very quiet and that she would get to play games on the iPad in the back, I slowly opened the door in the back of the large staged room (we were 15 minutes late because she had napped in our room). Zoe stepped inside and then let out a scream that left the full room of 300+ people to  turn around and stare at us. I quickly guided her outside again and decided that the closing plenary was probably boring anyway. And that she will have to be at least five before I try this again.

We spent the last night going out for very nice dinner with two newfound colleagues and one very old friend. Next morning we packed an overfull suitcase and took off for the airport. We have a very easy route home with only one layover and will wake up in Stockholm 8am Friday morning. Can't wait to see my own 'new' apartment.

The price we pay

Yesterday I had to finalize our plane tickets to our next big upcoming trip: I have a conference to got to, Zoe's dad is also going and we therefore decided to bring her rather than trying to drop her off at Grandma's. The conference is in the US so I am also making it into a visiting trip where I go to see a colleague/friend for some quality research time (he has kids Zoe's age and a nanny who can look after all of them during the day) and then seeing an even dearer friend in-between for some relaxation and red wine while Zoe sleeps at night. The plane ticket turned out to be insanely expensive and this is even without the internal return flight over to my first colleague (which his university is generously paying because I will be giving a talk). The problem is that we live in a not-so-well-connected city with few direct flights to the US and I had a few constraints (which could have saved a few hundred dollars but not more than that): I am not taking a 6 am flight from Stockholm. The airport is far out of the city and we need an hour and a half to get there. Getting up at 3 am with a two year old is just not an option. Flying through Frankfurt is also not an option; I have only bad experiences from there, cancelled flights, late flights and the airport is the most unpleasant one I know. Munich okay, Frankfurt not. I am also not having a five hour layover when we land and our body clocks are 9pm. That is way beyond Zoe's bedtime and she would not be able to walk from one gate to the other without crying and screaming. In the end we got the magic tickets: A fairly late start from Stockholm, direct to the US and only one more leg to the destination. On the way back I convinced my friend, whom Zoe adores, to take the same flight. I might be traveling on my own with her, but there will be somebody else to take the edge off if things get out of hand.

So I paid $1500 for Zoe's ticket. I tried to do a comparison and basically I am paying the equivalent of two new iPhone 5s for Zoe's ticket. Okay, her dad and I are sharing, so I guess we are paying an iPhone 5 each. Kids are expensive, but traveling kids are extremely expensive. I keep thinking of the saying "travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer". Not entirely sure of the sentiment but it reminds me that Zoe and I get richer on experiences at least.

Where did I go again?

It should be no surprise for the observant reader (someone who for example reads the title of my blog) that I travel a lot. In one month (October) I was in the US twice, and in-between, I was in London. All for work. The nice thing is that I am around other people who travel a lot too, since academia, and particularly my branch of social science, bases knowledge exchange on conferences and workshops, often international since my field is rather small. There are probably not more than a couple of thousand people in Sweden who are truly working in my broader field, PhD students through full professors. So today when I had coffee with a colleague who had just returned from three back to back trips and we exchanged journey experiences, I suddenly blanked on where I had been while he was also away. Not just blanking for a couple of second, but no I simply could not remember where I had been. At all. "I know I was flying somewhere!", I said and my colleague laughed and reassured me this also happened to him sometimes. After a couple of minutes and changing the topic, I finally remembered. I was in Florida. For two and a half days. In a resort for the conference the whole time. No wonder I couldn't remember.

Next week Zoe and I are off to India, a completely private trip for the leisure of both of us. My brother and his wife live there and I am so excited to go visit them and see parts of India for the first time. I am less excited about having a 2 and a half year old on a plane for 12 hours, but grandma brought 8 new books last time she was here and I am borrowing an iPad with movies on. I have also taken out my old baby wrap, which I can still carry Zoe in, hoping that the excitement of 'Zoe little baby in carrier' will add calmness to the trip.

41 hours to get to Florida

This fall I have had a lot of travel, recently the US, more specifically Florida. I was attending a small conference where I was presenting a research paper and since I was not able to bring Zoe, I tried to make it as short as possible. Still, it was at a resort in south Florida in October so I did schedule a day at the pool, just before the conference started. Things didn't  turn out that way though.

I left a very early Saturday morning, leaving Zoe with my babysitter because Zoe's dad would not be back from his trip to the US for another 28 hours. She was a bit cranky that I woke her up at 7am but I didn’t have the heart to just leave her sleeping. She might not remember that I  had told her I was leaving the night before. She was to spend the full day with my babysitter and at night a close friend was coming over to spend the night with her, playing with her in the morning until her dad arrived early afternoon.

I left teary eyed in the morning, getting the Arlanda Express and feeling business woman like with my small black suitcase and Kate Spade leather carryon. I boarded the plane that was going to take me to Frankfurt, to my connecting US flight. When waiting for the plane to back out, we got the news that there was a technical error on the plane, the engine fire indicator was malfunctioning. If there is something you want to be indicated of, it is a potential fire in the engine. We deplaned and boarded another one, leaving one a half hour later, bringing me to Frankfurt the same minute as my US plane took off. I rushed to the service center in the hope that they would be able to reroute me via some other US destination and at least get me to the right side of the Atlantic that day. No luck. Due to the soon arriving tropical storm Sandy, many US flights had been cancelled, leaving the remaining fully booked. Even the attempt to route me via San Francisco was unfruitful. I was sent to an airport hotel, “right next to” the Frankfurt airport and provided with an itinerary for next day.

Internet and Latte at the brown airport hotel

The hotel was grim to say the least. Up until then I had kept my cool, realizing that there was absolutely nothing I could do to change the situation. My day at the pool was lost the minute they said ‘technical error’ on my first flight. But as I got to that godforsaken hotel, 20 minutes drive on the autobahn by a taxi driver who clearly enjoyed the no-speed limit to the fear of his passengers, I had had it. Not only did my 7am flight mean that I had to take a 5 am shuttle to the airport from the so-called airport hotel (“our shuttle leaves every hour on the hour”), the internet at the hotel was also limited to an hour in the bar, leaving my ability to at least use this ‘intermezzo’ for work rather difficult. But worse, I had left Zoe for this. I had left her with strangers for money when I could have stayed with her instead. Obviously this was a not really true, because I could not have left on a Sunday (tickets overseas not including Saturdays are deemed business tickets and cost the range of $3000-4000 instead of $1000, making it very unlikely my department would have paid for it) and I could not have predicted that my pool day turned into a brown german hotel day. I was probably much better off in terms of getting to the US here in Frankfurt than back in Stockholm under the circumstances. After shedding a few tears I went down to the bar and ordered a latte, which in Germany apparently is a bit of coffee with a liter of milk, and spent my one hour internet allowance surfing Facebook and random blogs.

Next morning the shuttle picked me and some other unfortunate Swedes up at 5 am and my journey to Florida went smoothly from then on. Zoe’s dad made it back to Stockholm before I left Europe, making me feel safe about leaving. I skyped with her one evening where she said that mommy should fly back to Stockholm and that “Zoe love Mommy”. I missed her but I’m getting better in leaving her for a couple of days. In the end I am returning before a week has passed from when I left her.

Bringing babies to conferences

As I proudly announced about a month ago, I had a paper accepted to the prime conference in my field. It is the conference I always attend and have attended since starting my PhD, so I have been going for almost 10 years. This year the conference is in Texas in May, starting exactly the day after Zoe's second birthday. Which means that, opposite last year, I am not considering bringing her. She would be an international full flight fare. Non-expensable. Luckily, my mom has graciously offered to look after her for the week it takes to travel, attend for 4 days and travel back. Another reason I am not going to bring her is due to last years experiences of bringing a baby to conferences:

Being part of an academic couple that actually publishes and attends the very same conferences presents a few perks and a lot of complications. The perks are that we save on hotel money, travel together and then of course, generally have someone to go home with at the end of the evening (yes, conferences are great for hooking up, in fact we initially hooked up at a conference ourselves, albeit one that Mark actually didn't attend but sneaked into to chat me up...). The complications before we had Zoe were negligible but now we are facing a whole new set of factors. Last year we had two conferences where we both wanted/needed to go, one in China when Zoe was 10 months and the conference described above, in Canada when she had just turned 1. Because of her age and since we didn't live near family in California, the only choice was for one of us to stay home with her or for us to bring her. We decided to bring her for both trips with remarkably different outcome.

It turns out that 10 months is the ideas travel age for a baby and now that I know this, I cannot stop recommending parents to take a trip (if that is a possibility) at exactly this time. It is also the ultimate 'bringing baby to a conference' age, especially if the conference is fairly small and is mostly attended by close colleagues/friends. We had an amazing time, Zoe got all the right attention and I actually felt I was able to attend the conference. A few key highlights include Zoe sleeping through two sessions in my wrap, while I attentively listened to my colleagues' presentations and her sitting in a high chair munching rice and fortune cookies while we ate lunch and chatted with same colleagues. She was small enough to still be carried on my front easily, she could fall asleep there and she was still mainly breastfed, making the stress about food non-existing.

However, it turns that 12 months is the worst time to take a baby to a conference. At this time she had started scooting (hopping on her bum to get forward, something that especially bright babies do just before they learn to crawl and then learn to walk...), which meant that she was not happy just sitting down. She needed action around her, preferably right now and if it didn't happen she made sure to let me know her annoyance. Loudly. She was not sleeping easily in a carrier, in fact I had to roam the hallways for hours to get her to go to sleep in her stroller, the mode of transportation that we had now adjusted to. She had found her temper and stubbornness and did not take a "wait one minute" very lightly. I spent an hour in the conference center's medical room where they had let me in to nurse her because all other comfy corners seemed full of colleagues that I would like to be able to look in the eyes again later on. But most of all, I felt like a mom at this conference. Zoe had taken over my professional personality. Where she at 10 months could be sitting quietly in her carrier on me, and still be just an accessory, now she was a full fledged proof the I was a Mom with capital M. Gone was professional Dr. B, the author of several well-cited articles and known for insightful research within interesting subfields. Instead was a Mom who had crashed an academic conference. Some people talked to me, even with Zoe scooting at my feet, but others clearly avoided me, as if they didn't want to succumb to the Mom-ness. It didn't help that Zoe had recently decided that Mommy was best. Leaving her with her dad would introduce a fit of screaming, of course only until I was out of sight, but this was enough for me to hesitate handing her over. The end result was that I got to see one actual session the whole conference. The remaining time, I either rolled Zoe around in her stroller trying to find the new exciting thing that would entertain her (escalators anyone?) or roamed between three sessions because when I finally had an hour, I hadn't had the time to check the program and walked into the wrong session but didn't realize for 10 minutes. Then of course there was my own presentation and a session I was chairing, neither which included topics of great interest to me (including my own presentation, yes).

After Zoe finally fell asleep an hour into the conference reception I left her 

in her stroller in a corner with a this note: "If I cry please call my mom or 

dad [phone numbers]". It was the best hour of the conference.

Although, or perhaps because, my field is largely male dominated (however my subfield is closer to 30/70), we have frequent discussions about bringing children to conferences. Opinions are generally openminded and encouraging, but also cautious of directly accommodating parents and children. In fact, when the conference is located in the US, insurance issues dictate that we are not allowed to bring children into the conference centers (a problem I obviously wasn't faced with last year). I wish I could be wholeheartedly arguing for parents always bringing their children if they need to but my personal experiences illustrate the ambivalent issues at place here: when is it possible to bring a baby and still remain professional, still feel that you are being taken seriously as a colleague? (because we all know that screaming "No, you cannot eat that plant/take off your clothes/throw that muffin at the nice senior professor who I always hoped would respect my work" at your toddler does not improve one's professional look.) And when is this just not possible and you need to actually skip the conference if you cannot find suitable childcare? Well, I found the fine line between the two, but the hard way. However, I hope to at least pass on my experiences to new academic mothers who have to make the tough decisions of what do with their baby when attending a conference.

Accept

Today I got a piece of really good news: an academic paper that I wrote based on thoughts I have had for a long time, actually since I did my first empirical studies during my PhD, has been accepted to the prime conference in my field. They have a 23% acceptance rate and although I have had papers there before, this is my first 'solo-author' paper. It shows that my rather controversial thoughts on the topic are valid and I now have the opportunity to presents these issues to a larger audience. I am obviously already nervous if I can defend them well enough during question time, but so far, this is overshadowed by my excitement.

This also means that I am going to a conference in Texas in May, leaving on Zoe's 2nd birthday. Alas, she will be a full fare ticket and since there is no childcare at this conference, and Mark is going too, I have decided to leave her at home with grandma. It will be the first time I am away from Zoe for more than one night, but she loves her grandma and I know she will be fine. May is still 5 months away.