Android RecyclerView NotifyDataSetChanged with LiveData

When instantiating the ListAdapter for my RecyclerView, I call:

    viewModel.currentList.observe(viewLifecycleOwner){
        adapter.submitList(it)
    }

which is what I've seen done in the Android Sunflower project as the proper way to submit LiveData to a RecyclerView. This works fine, and when I add items to my database they are updated in the RecyclerView. However, if I write

    viewModel.currentList.observe(viewLifecycleOwner){
        adapter.submitList(it)
        adapter.notifyDataSetChanged()
    }

Then my adapters data observer always lags behind. I call

adapter.registerAdapterDataObserver(object : RecyclerView.AdapterDataObserver(){
    override fun onChanged() {
        super.onChanged()
            if (adapter.currentList.isEmpty()) {
                empty_dataset_text_view.visibility = View.VISIBLE
            } else {
                empty_dataset_text_view.visibility = View.GONE
            }
        }
})

And empty_dataset_text_view appears one change after the list size reached zero, and likewise it disappears one change after the list size is non-zero.

Clearly, the observer is running the code before it has submitted it which in this case is LiveData queried from Room. I'd simply like to know what the workaround is for this: is there a way to "await" a return from my LiveData?