I desperately needed to write. Eighty percent of the way through my Ph.D., with revisions to make and two more chapters to complete, I felt mounting pressure to get words on paper. When I was a child, the words would have come easily. I wrote inspired and quickly, churning out poem after poem for our local newspaper. But the rigid essay structures of high school and university extinguished my love of writing. I would sit at my computer late into the night, forcing the words out at turtle speed. Writing remained slow and laborious during graduate school—until I became a mum to twins.
Before my twins were born, I had envisioned tinkering away at my thesis while the babies slept blissfully in their bassinets. My university offered maternity leave, but I had chosen not to take it. I was nearly done with my doctorate and did not want to wait. I figured things would only get trickier as the twins got older.
