Similar problem here! I find myself just sitting at the computer wasting time for hours.. it's agonizing!
It helps sometimes if I get away from the computer for a bit, get a snack, go to the gym, work up a bit of a sweat, take a shower, and come back to my writing feeling energized :)

I did that.
I regret it a little because it set back my graduation time a bit.. but I was desperately unhappy with my first choice of lab, and I'm quite content with my current lab, so I imagine that it was the right choice!

Thank you for sharing your opinion :) I really feel strengthened quite a bit by the feedback here. My husband and I have decided that we'll start "trying" as soon as my thesis is completed. You're right.. if we want to have a kid, we should make that a priority, I'll have the rest of my life to work on my career.. and there will probably never be a good time when a pregnancy would not be disruptive! I hope that whoever my employer is when I do get pregnant is as understanding as everyone on this board :) But if not, there's no job I could get that would be such a fabulous once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I'd want to pass up the chance to have a child..

It really is the biggest problem with being a woman in this sort of field, I've got this one thing that I really want to do.. and I'm definitely going to need to take some time off of work to do it. I don't know how much, I mean, I'm not going to be greedy about it, I don't need paid leave and hopefully if all goes well, I won't need too much leave.. heck, I only want to have 1 kid, so I'm not going to make a habit of this! But I definitely want to try to have one kid and I want to have it relatively soon and when you're on a career path there's just never going to be a "good" time to go through all that.

Thanks for the feedback. The people at work with whom I'm close enough to discuss this sort of thing are all very career-minded and not in serious relationships, so they don't understand my urge to reproduce. I know that I could theoretically wait until I'm well into my 30s, but I have some medical problems that I worry are going to make it difficult (signs of PCOS), so my feeling is growing that I should start trying sooner rather than later.
Ideally, I think I want to go off of the pill when I graduate (or maybe a month or 2 before!) and see what happens.. but I feel like it would be irresponsible to do that and not know what jobs I might be applying for, not knowing what I might end up doing, and risking that I might get a great job or post doc opportunity and then find that I'm pregnant right away.. and have to worry about immediately telling my new boss that I'm going to need to take some sort of leave in 9 months.

At the moment, I think I would. I haven't graduated yet, but hope to do so within the next year. It's complicated my life, damaged my health, crippled my finances, and put me in a strange position regarding starting a family.. but I've learned a lot, and I still think that when I finally defend my thesis, it'll be worthwhile :)

I'm a 26 year old phd candidate, hoping to graduate in the summer of 2008. Following graduation, I'm interested in industry or ideally government work (not academia).
I'm married and trying to figure out when to start trying to have a kid. Health concerns that make me think that if I want to have a shot at this, I really ought to start trying before I'm 30.. I'm interested in applying for government post doc positions when I graduate, but what do people think/know about being pregnant while a post doc? Is it fair to apply for post doc positions when I graduate when I intend on trying to get pregnant asap? Uggh. It's just so complicated.