The suckiest part of being a scientist and a mom...

... to me right now is the unpredictability of sleep. In order to function at a decent level I need a certain amount of sleep. And being pregnant I need a little more too I think. Pre-baby I knew that if I had important stuff to write (like the pile of grants and fellowships that I'm writing now), I would go to bed early and make sure I'm rested so that I can be focused the next day. Now, I can go to bed however early I want, but if BlueEyes is having a crappy night, then so am I.

I haven't written a lot about baby sleep recently, but it's still not awesome. A great night is when BlueEyes wakes up for the first time around 2 pm and an awesome night is when he doesn't wake up at all, but these awesome nights can be counted on the fingers of half a hand. Most of the time I'm okay with that. I know that after a crappy night, a better night will follow. But in these pre-deadline days when I'm slightly stressed about funding and what that means for my career (slightly is really a huge understatement) I find myself having a hard time to keep my cool about this. And it has been proven now that me panicking about lack of sleep in the middle of the night does not increase sleep for anyone in this family. So there's that. Back to grant writing (1 down, 3 to go).