Thread by @RRileylab

I don't usually make posts like this, but there is so much talk about starting your family as an early career academic and how stressful it is. We welcomed our little guy into the world about a month ago after a long and stressful journey to get him here. 1/n

We suffered infertility and several losses over the past three years, all during my postdoc and while interviewing for faculty positions (and a pandemic). I've been very fortunate to have had a supportive postdoc PI and faculty department chair. Going through this put it all in

Perspective. Of course everyone has different thoughts on this, but over the past three years it has become apparent that personal and professional aspirations can and should happen simultaneously. We can't put either one on hold for the other, life shouldn't work like that.

This is especially true for young women in academia, but that is a topic for another day. The last three years were brutal, but they taught me that personal life and professional life can happen at the same time, and they are both so worth it. I mean, look at this adorable face!

And then there is the other side of personal tragedy and how it mixes with professional goals - what happens when they come together? Without the past three years, I never would've realized the serious lack of women's health and pregnancy research, which is now my sole focus.

I hope to follow in the footsteps of other researchers focused on women's health like @KWhiteheadLab @TheDayLab @DocElovitz @LauraEnsignPhD (and more) as my program builds, and I hope to merge both the research and the personal aspects of women's health, because they should be

Intertwined if we want to make real progress for women everywhere. Anyway, here's to my first thread - I hope to be more transparent in the future because this is an important topic for women in academia.