But Carrie Mathison, Beyonce and Kate Middleton make it look so easy!

I wrote a post last week and put it off due to some confidentiality ‘grey areas’, then I spent a week working on a competition entry in an attempt to get some of this done and didn’t post anything. In the meanwhile the same topic seems to keep cropping up, so I thought I’d ask for some thoughts…

It might be the ‘familial’ time of the year or just a time in my life when I’m noticing these things but, at the moment, there seems to be a lot of discussion in the science press and in blogs about having kids as a researcher. 

First there's the talk of time-juggling, the hard-work and the atrophy of women from science as they get older. Then there’s the fact that it is possible, that institutions are waking up to the need to change and the pay off of having a happy family life and fantastic professional career.

Ace. Well done if this is you. However, I’ve been wondering if this is a life I want. 

There was a really great post recently from a scientist who said that she simple chose not to have kids. That she couldn’t see how she, personally, could do both. I really appreciated her honesty  as it’s something I’m thinking about a lot at the moment. 

I grew up with ‘Girl Power’ and the overwhelming message that we, as women, could ‘have it all’. It’s great on paper and if you can make it work then ‘Brava’, I’m impressed. But there’s also an inherent pressure that if you don’t manage to ‘do both’, then you’ve failed somewhere, somehow. For example, the women who choose their jobs over children are ‘heartless’ simply because they’ve made a conscious choice for their future that doesn’t involve giving birth, whilst the women who step back from their careers to have children get ‘what a shame’ or ‘you know we DO have a Gold Athena Swan award – it’s much easier than it used to be…’. I’m sure it is. I know a few successful scientists who also happen to be female and have children. Mostly, they are older having children and tell us almost-thirty-somethings ‘don’t wait’, ‘don’t put it off’, ‘you can’t plan these things’ and the standard ‘there’s never a good time…’

But what I want to know, genuinely, what I’d really like to hear about, is the pregnancy stage of having a baby. You can Athena-Swan-flexible-hours-crèche-facility all you like about having children but someone has to have the baby in their body for (hopefully) nine months. What do lab-scientists do then? From what I can gather, different countries have different laws and different companies have varying levels of ‘extra’ precautions when it comes to pregnant women. 

I’m a research chemist. I’m perfectly confident that on a daily basis I don’t get exposed to chemicals that are (too) toxic, but it’s honestly unrealistic, even with all the safety codes of conduct that we have, to say that I don’t get exposed to anything. If the ventilation fails in the lab (which happens occasionally), my skin gets irritated from the solvents, many of which are carcinogenic. When I express (make) a protein, I use toxic bacteria that could easily give me a nasty case of ‘food’ poisoning. Using certain liquids in the lab makes me retch and, during my PhD, I knew if I'd made a particular precursor because my nose would start to itch. These are all things that don’t usually bother me as I know that I work safely in the lab and the risk to me is tiny. However, would I be so blasé if I was pregnant? I don’t think so. 

I raised the issue of pregnancy, lab-work and my (possible) reluctance to combine them at a meeting recently. I regretted it instantly. Pretty quickly the conversation moved into anecdotes about women who refused to work near WiFi and proud stories of pregnant wives who had to look side-ways down a microscope at 40 weeks pregnant as her bump was just too big to look past. So is that what it’s reduced to? You’re either seen as over-sensitive and afraid of everything (a joke) or willing to work in the lab literally until you give birth (a ‘real’ scientist).

In the same meeting I heard ‘Well I expect pregnant women to work’ and ‘you know, miscarriages are extremely common’, as if by simply mentioning that you have misgivings about lab-work and childbearing you’re a slacker and that losing your baby is so common that it’s laughable to be concerned about the lab having an influence on it. Some people avoid prosciutto and tiramisu during pregnancy. They quit smoking, stop drinking and often pay far more attention to their health than they normally would, I’m just wondering what people do who are involved in jobs that are a little ‘riskier’ tend to do. 

This, of course, isn’t limited to lab-work, on any London street you can often see a police officer in a stab vest – do they still feel comfortable walking the beat when they are pregnant? Do doctors and nurses still do horrendous shifts with a baby on the way? What about athletes? I’m not suggesting that women be confined to bed-rest and Jane Austen novels during pregnancy, I’m actually not suggesting anything, I’d just genuinely like to hear from women and partners of women who have slightly ‘risky’ jobs to find out about what they did and how they felt when they were pregnant. And before people start to quote me examples of women who fought wars, bare-knuckled whilst carrying triplets, I know that women CAN do amazing things whilst pregnant, not least carry the bloody baby, I’d just like to be allowed to talk about the fact that I might not want to continue in the lab IF I got pregnant without being labelled a quitter/slacker/hypochondriac.

And, another thing, if someone does bring this up in your lab/office/building site don’t role your eyes, comment on her ‘biological clock’ ticking or nudge the person next to you because so-and-so is BOUND to be pregnant soon and it’s going to be sooo inconvenient for you. Most women don’t want to be the office pariah but it seems that just by mentioning that we might, at some point, deliberately get pregnant, and then, be concerned for the pregnancy rather than your cell counts/IC50s/target compounds, then we’re not dedicated enough. 

I just wondered, I know there are risk assessments and codes of conduct but a lot of it comes down to what a pregnant woman is 'comfortable' doing. If your simply not happy to do your pre-pregnancy job if you do get pregnant, then what do you do? Do you not take jobs/promotions just in case?

Or do you take what comes along and risk having to tell your new boss that you're pregnant and, by the way, you don't really want to do the job they hired you for and, oh yeah, the law says they have to find you something else?

Answers on a postcard. Or, if you prefer, there's a comment box below.