Okay so now some thoughts on pregnancy and academia and pandemics. First, to get the obvious out of the way — being pregnant during a pandemic has its stressors. 1/

Lots of doctor’s appointments, uncertainty about the hospital situation during delivery and who will be allowed to be there with me, stress about who will be able to meet the baby once he’s born, etc. 2/

But, there are some interesting benefits to being a pregnant academic during a pandemic (ha that has a ring to it), which speak to some of the difficulties of non-pandemic academic pregnancy: 3/

By the time you are obviously showing, pregnancy is typically a very obvious and public part of your life. I haven’t been (this) pregnant before (yes, I have had losses, maybe I’ll tweet about that someday), but 4/

I assume many if not most interactions are shaped by people being able to tell that you are pregnant. E.g., you meet someone new at a conference and they say congratulations and ask when you are due, etc. 5/

While I think it’s important to normalize pregnancy / having kids in academia, there is something really nice about living in this strange zoom world where I get to choose whether it is part of the conversation. 6/

When I meet with a new person, no one feels any need to or uncertainty about whether to comment on the pregnancy. I can bring it up if I want or not bring it up if I don’t want to. 7/

No one is trying to touch my belly. 8/

The 100 students in my lecture course have no idea I am pregnant (unless they follow me on twitter, in which case they do now). That is a very different experience, on several dimensions, than standing in front of them lecturing while very pregnant. 9/

In the first trimester, naps and throw up sessions were (relatively) easy to accommodate. 10/

I can give talks anywhere in the world into my third trimester. 11/

The zoom blur feature makes it so that I don’t have to put on tons of makeup to try to cover my blotchy, acne-covered face. 12/

That may sound trivial, but it makes a huge difference in my life, especially with the need to constantly record lectures. Please don’t make me give talks via bluejeans! 13/

I don’t think the moral of the story is to try to be pregnant during a pandemic, but it does have some interesting benefits, which might give us some ideas for making non-pandemic pregnant academic life better. /end

Loving the DMs from pregnant ladies resonating with this . So cool that twitter can connect people that way. My DMs are open, keep writing .

Oh, and to the pregnant academics, if you don't already know about @ProfEmilyOster, you're welcome.