Science, maternity leave and a global pandemic!
Two of our researchers, Dr Jenny Hinley and Dr Simon Baker of the Jack Birch Unit, have been spending lockdown continuing their vital research while caring for two young children at home.
Here, Jenny writes about how they have managed to do both full-time jobs.
Our son Elliot was born in June last year and after 10 months maternity leave, the plan was to head back to my full time job at the University of York. I work as a Senior Research Technician in the Jack Birch Unit, where we study the events that turn healthy cells in the human body into cancer. Our laboratory has a specific interest in bladder cancer and our research is funded by York Against Cancer. My post is funded by the charity and I have a dual role; performing research into bladder cancer as well as managing the day-to-day running of the lab and all the legislation that goes with that.
The plan was for Elliot to attend nursery on campus. We were happy with our choice, we know the nursery and staff well, as our eldest child (Izzy aged five) attended the same nursery from seven months old. After the UK was put under lockdown on March 23 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, everything changed. I found myself not being able to leave home. I had already spent 10 months cooped up, but now the schools were closed and I had a full-time job to be doing! Thankfully, my husband, Simon, is also a researcher in the Jack Birch Unit and so I wasn’t alone. But, with two full-time jobs, home-schooling to do and both children needing our full-time attention, it has been (and continues to be) a juggling act, with very little down time!
Our days begin at Elliot’s preferred wake-up time of 5.30am, which Simon & I take it in turns to indulge. Usually I work the mornings, starting after breakfast at 7.30am. We’re in a standard 3-bed semi and have no home office, so work happens on our dining table, while Simon does some home-schooling and takes the kids out to our local woods for a play. After lunch, we swap, Simon works afternoons and I take the kids for the rest of the afternoon. We break for dinner, bath time and the dreaded witching hour, a particularly challenging hour between 6 and 7pm that parents of young children will empathise with as the worst hour of the day. Then we make a coffee, consume more chocolate than we would like to admit, wait for the tinnitus of the last hour to wear off and open our laptops, ready for the second half of the working day, writing paper manuscripts with the occasional “get back to bed please” thrown in for good measure.
Most days are stressful and exhausting. Some days we wake up to a teething baby who cries all day, or a grumpy five-year-old. With no family to fall back on, no childcare, no dinner with friends to listen to your moans, it can feel endless. But there are really good parts too. Coming off maternity leave hasn’t been a huge emotional hurdle this time around. I don’t have the maternal guilt of knowing that I may not hear his first words or see his first steps. Chances are, this time, I will. We taught Izzy to ride a bike, plant vegetables, hoover the lounge, count to 100. And I know in time I’ll forget how tiring all this was and remember these wonderful things.
Total flexibility of working hours has been a tremendous help to us, and I know is a luxury not all working parents have. Our kids have now attended more Zoom meetings that I did in my first 38 years! And we are now getting back in to doing some lab work too! We go in to the lab to run experiments (under very strict social distancing rules) and do all the planning and writing up from home. I really enjoy the variety of my job and feel incredibly grateful that I can continue to keep doing my research while looking after my kids too!