That IS what the baby sling is for. Baby’s going to have to put up with napping in a sling while mammy writes because PhD needs to get done!

I am so glad to hear your son is pretty chill despite pregnancy stress. Like I know, everyone says, they have their own personalities and there are very vague broad effects on population scale from pregnancy factors and genetic factors, but every baby is just their own self. I know that, and yet still I worry.

They can be a bit tricky to get the hang of. At first I needed to set aside a very unhurried bathroom time, and have my hand be dripping wet, and take my time while doing slow deep breaths. Now I can shove them in no problem. It can hurt going in, although ideally it shouldn’t. I’m very sensitive and tight so it…

I would just like to pointlessly say that my ideal bathroom also involves a big Japanese soaking tub. And a Japanese electronic bidet toilet.

Hi Copper! Yes that sounds like what it could be!! I called a midwife last night (my maternity hospital has a 24/7 line for questions/worries which is amazing) and she suggested paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) and a heat pack, and they helped and I got a better night’s sleep than I have been getting. “Tired and in…

Thank you for taking up this banner for my cause <3 

Wow your final year sounds like a nightmare!! I would actually love a lectureship post, I like research a lot and I think it’s really important and inspiring, but I love teaching/lecturing, it’s my favourite thing to actually _do_ day-to-day.

Oh clever. I got a call-out in a Pissing Contest once, I should have done that then! Maybe I’ll start posting cat photos to try to lure a writer’s attention...

Thank you, you’re right. (Although here they don’t really lie, just exaggerate slightly, and almost everyone finishes in the given time or within one extension. Lots of people take four-and-a-half years all told, but I know very very few people who took years longer (unless they were doing it part time). Actually the…

Thank you <3 I’m okay, just tired and sad and stressed! 

I also don’t understand the greys. I post regularly, I’m nice, I’ve directly asked, several times. I dunno! I’m not grey anymore on Lifehacker, despite posting there WAY less frequently. Who even knows.

Apologies to everyone who replied with lovely baby sling advice last week; I posted in SNS Saturday night but couldn’t stay up to catch any of the replies, usually I get to them on Sunday when that happens. On Sunday I got up miserable and spaced-out and I’ve been more or less miserable and spaced-out all week. I read…

Adding salt manually is kind of crunchy and is difficult to do in correct proportions for small amounts. I always want salt in my butter, it’s tastier, so why would I bother buying unsalted and adding salt myself to all of it? (and anyway it’s the normal kind of butter here in Ireland)

Don’t feel bad, feel good that you’re making the tastiest possible iteration of box mac and cheese!

Just don’t add the extra salt! Salted butter is the overwhelming norm here (Ireland, yes we all buy Kerrygold-standard butter for everything bc that’s just butter here) and when I use an American recipe that asks for unsalted butter, and then salt, I just either omit the salt or halve it, depending on the ratios…

I fuckin hate Varadkar and his bullshit neoliberal (lack of) solutions to our very real homegrown problems, but I couldn’t wish Mike Pence on him. Although if I was Taoiseach I would refuse to meet Pence, but that’s one of the many reasons I’m not Taoiseach and probably shouldn’t be. 

I think that parenthetical references the way that there’s been talk of a male contraceptive pill a few times over the last several years, and it’s been stalled because “there are side effects”, when those “decades of research” Julianne references show that there are significant mild and moderate side effects to the…

I only realised afterwards that your comment was from a little while ago! The article came up in the sidebar for me so I thought it was new.

~☆ Pregnancy/Baby Thread ☆~

I’m due end of Sept and my midwife said “hopefully the flu vaccine will arrive before you’re due so you can get it before you give birth”. So that implies that you should get it now? I think it takes a few weeks to be fully effective so baby might not be getting much in the way of immunity, but I would guess sooner…