First day off work

I decided to take my leave from 2 weeks before my due date. This seems atypical for most of my colleagues, who work right up until the due date, or until the baby makes its presence known, whichever comes first. I am lucky in that I have a lot of sick days saved up, as well as vacation days, as well as (and this is really the most important thing when you are a post-doc) an understanding mentor. From talking to an acquaintance who is on the post-doc committee at my institution, there are plenty of mentors who are vehemently opposed to their female post-docs taking more than a few weeks total off for maternity leave. Interestingly enough, many of these seem to be female themselves, and who have had children. The whole "I had to be back at the lab bench in 4 weeks, so should you" mentality. Per the US government, I have 12 protected weeks for maternity leave (they are of course, unpaid, unless one is in my situation with a lot of sick leave owing) and I intend to take every one of them.

That said, this whole two weeks before the due date thing seemed like a good idea at the time (I can make and freeze food, relax before the inevitable months of sleeplessness, do last minute baby-prep stuff), but I realise that it does lead me to do one thing: eat. I am a boredom-eater from way back and combine that with the hunger of the end of pregnancy and an incredible ramp up in my already quite high baseline level of sugar craving, and I'm left with a manic desire to go to the corner store and buy all of the candy bars in sight. Eating a lot of fruit has curbed the cravings, but it's just not the same as half a pack of circus peanuts.