I got pregnant about 10 months into my funded PhD. It worked out great - because my husband took on a massive amount of childcare after my maternity leave finished to give me the space to complete. I submitted on time, and now don't have to worry about being an 'old' mother and can look for jobs without thinking about when to get pregnant. However I do think if you want a career in academia, more than one is madness. I literally do not know a single woman with more than one child who has been able to make that work (unless her husband is a stay-at-home full-time dad).

Make sure before you embark on this route that your husband is totally committed too...you will need his support.

Thank you Chickpea! Hope the bureaucracy gets sorted out soon - some bits and pieces are holding up my viva date as well. It's the best feeling to finish though!

I submitted - on time! Thank you everyone for your kind comments, it really helped in those stressful last few days. Now to wait for the Viva....

Last day of writing today - tomorrow it's off to the printer's. Wish me luck! The edits seem to be taking forever...

Don't fret Fraps, I was in exactly your position just a few short months ago - I had done a lot of research, but writing it all up seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. I am now 15 days from submission (12 days from printing final version) and am looking at just the conclusion and final 'polishing'. Just tackle it bit by bit - each little section will make a chapter eventually and you will soon get into the flow. Better to get something down and come back to it later.

Having said that, I am now getting 'writing fatigue' - any tips on how to combat that?

I'm in exactly the same spot and have yet to write my conclusion. We can do it!!!!

Is nobody here using endote (or similar?) It has made editing and reviewing my sources and citations a breeze! On my final 1000 words now - then just the conclusion. Only three weeks to go now...

My topic is the same - I draw theoretical background from many different areas which all contribute to (my somewhat underdeveloped) field. All I can say is read read read - it will all come together in the end, but only once you have a firm grasp of all the issues involved and how they contribute to each other...

I think the advice to make a detailed spreadsheet of your corrections and where they are is excellent. Maybe I would also include the new ones, and if you disagree with them give a reason why and substantiate it with references or quotes. I also think that this is great news for you, for the reasons given above. Unbelievable that they have dragged this out for 26 months!!!!!

This is an incredibly difficult situation, but as far as I can tell it boils down to these questions: how rare are job offers of such caliber in your field, how many other people in your field will be getting PhDs while you are working, and how quickly does your field move in terms of research developments? My field is one where until very recently having a PhD was incredibly rare and very much the exception. Now, to get the type of job I want it is a requirement. While this does not apply so much to people who are already in the job, they are urged to do one in their spare time. Would you be upset to work for, say, five years, and then find that the promotion/better job elsewhere went to a recent PhD who did not have the job experience but had the research experience and maybe a publication record? I have seen this happen. And yet, a great salary and doing the job you want with a PhD further down the line a possibility sounds also great.

It totally depends on your field and what is most valued there. And what your ideal career trajectory is in terms of stability, monetary benefit and future funding. Will you be able to find another fully funded PhD down the line? Are jobs going to be scarce in the future? Would you be able to self-fund should it be necessary? What are your family plans? Is going back to a PhD with a family to support realistic?

Thank you GeographyJo - felt much better already after getting the two articles out of the way. I can't believe this baby will be finished so soon. How many more chapters have you got to do?

I am so tired today, I can barely focus. Have had the weekend from hell trying to revise and resubmit a paper I have been working on, with another deadline looming today! Needless to say barely any work on my thesis has got done in the last two weeks. Feel like I have writing burnout...

I wouldn't give up now - you've come so far already. How long have you got to do these corrections? I would just look at the report very methodically and go through it point by point. I understand that it is really disheartening to get that type of feedback, but you never know what types of opportunities might open up in the future and if you have your Phd you're ready for them.

By the way, my mum got her first academic contract through a funded project in her area at 58!

Happens to me all the time - important stuff I've had to re-read, but sometimes that's a good thing as your knowledge expands over time and you might understand the article in a different way when you're further down the road - and make sense of it in a completely new context.
Using a referencing software package has helped me enormously - as has converting everything to PDFs and having it all on my tablet :). But yeah - I've been avoiding doing the literature review for exactly this reason. Sadly as my deadline approaches I now have to bite the bullet...

Another thing that has happened to me is what I call the 'hunter-gatherer syndrome' - I get into a real frenzy finding new interesting articles, file them and never read them. Then a year later I 're-discover' them in a long-forgotten folder and realise that they were really quite relevant and it would have helped to actually read them sooner...

I am more or less in the same boat Strawberrygirl - deadline in 3 months, one more chapter to write + intro and conclusion + revising other chapters to perfection. How have you been getting on in the last month since you posted? I am aiming for a complete final draft by mid-January...panic is understating it.