Sorry to keep posting about this, but I finally realized what upset me so much about the incident around my breast milk at work. M's behavior and words implied that my breast milk is disgusting, and that's what really got to me. I was insulted, but it went beyond that. I take the time every day to go and pump that milk. It's what nourishes R, and it's a very important thing that she and I share together, and the fact that M found this gross made me feel defensive, protective of R, and as I said, insulted. I feel a lot better now that I've made this connection.

Oh my goodness, so much development in such a short time! R is now sitting unsupported for several minutes at a time. She hasn't figured out how to get her knees under her when she's on her belly, but she pushes all the way up on her arms and lifts her hips off the ground. She is clearly and purposefully looking at her toys and trying to get to them. We started her on rice cereal this weekend - it went well. She obviously spit a lot out, but she swallowed some too and while she didn't seem incredibly enthusiastic, she didn't complain one bit. AND, I see the beginnings of a tooth popping through!

She is such a delightful little girl. She's got such a winning personality. She's cheerful and friendly and pretty laid back and just so much fun to be around! We had a lot of fun Saturday with my dad, my brother, and his fiancee. DH was sick on Sunday, which is too bad, but R and I spent the whole day alone together while he was in bed, and we had such a great time together! I just can't get over her

One thing that's sort of nagging at me - when my dad arrived Friday night, R was pretty tired. She exhibited a little stranger anxiety, which my dad handled just fine. He didn't take it personally, and the next day she was totally fine with him, and with my brother and his fiancee. But my dad kept telling me I should try to find some activity group for her to make sure she's getting exposure to other people, since she stays home with DH during the day. I used to take her to a baby yoga class and a breast-feeding support group, but they were in the middle of my work day as well as her morning nap. I think it's more important for her to get her sleep than to go to some group activity. When I mentioned that to my dad, he seemed to think naps could be adjusted, but she's at an age right now where she's really fighting her naps, and I just don't agree with him. Even if I can find a group on the weekend not during her nap time, I'm not sure I want to fork out the cash and the time. There's enough to do on weekends as it is, and I'm not sure how important it is for her to get lots of exposure to other people right now. It's not like she lives in a bubble, and stranger anxiety is a normal part of growing up. She'll be starting daycare when she's 12 months. Surely not going to an activity group now is not going to make it impossible for her to adapt to daycare, right? Of course I want to do what's best for her, but I'm just not sure how much this particular point matters. It did make me a little annoyed at my dad, just because I felt like he was giving me parenting advice I didn't necessarily agree with, which made me feel like I am doing something wrong. If any moms feels like they have any input on this, please feel free to PM me!

Amazingly enough I don't really have anything to complain about today R is doing great - she now gets on her hands and knees and rocks (see, I knew it would happen!), but she still seems to prefer picking her hips and belly up and being in the plank position. So cute! And while she's not crawling yet, she moves fast! She's got two itsy-bitsy teeth, not all the way in yet, but man are those puppies sharp! I've got to stop letting her chomp on my hand! She's a champion eater of rice cereal now, and has also started peas (boy did that lead to a hilarious photo-op). She's such a perfect little pumpkin. I'm sorry I gush about her so much if it drives any of you nuts, but I can't help it. I'm sure I've said it before, but I just can't get enough of her!

We spent a wonderful weekend at my dad's for his 65th birthday. My brother and his fiancee were there as well, and we all had such a nice time together. R did really well but was overwhelmed with all the people at one point when some of my dad's friends joined us. She seemed really exhausted after the weekend, but then we all were, so I guess it's just the effect of traveling and being away from home.

We just cut out the late night nursing three nights ago. Everything is going well so far, though R did wake up a few times last night. She eventually got herself back to sleep, but I was tired today from having my sleep disrupted. Small price, I know - I am grateful that she generally sleeps 12 hours at night! I haven't taken up pumping at night, because I haven't had supply issues so far and I hate pumping so much. Things have been fine supply-wise, but R didn't seem terribly interested in nursing at dinner tonight. I worry that maybe she's getting so into solid food she's not as keen on the milk? Though DH didn't notice any preference this afternoon when he gave her a bottle for lunch. Maybe it was just a fluke, but I'll definitely have to keep an eye on that. I am so not ready to stop nursing altogether! Plus R still needs her milk!

Had a little bit of a rough day. I've been feeling like I'm not as smart as I've always convinced myself I am - that I got this far by working really hard and fooling everyone into thinking I was that smart. I guess the problem is that I'm constantly surrounded by brilliant people who have a lot of content knowledge in areas I know very little about. For example, I'm trying to learn some new concepts related to processing functional imaging data, and the people explaining them to me are incredibly smart math/computer gurus, and the fact that I struggle to understand what they're saying makes me feel dumb. Then it's worse because I don't ask enough questions because I don't want to seem dumb... this reminds me of before I went to college. My husband is 7 years older than I am and we hung out with a group of ridiculously smart ivy-league educated people, and I always felt so out of my depths. It's amazing how much going to college helped with that (I'm sure there are other things, more related to personal growth, that helped as well). Med school was interesting in that I certainly wasn't the only smart person, but I didn't feel like my intelligence was threatened, because it mostly had to do with how well you memorize things. I'm not the greatest memorizer, but then I don't value that skill as highly as I value raw intelligence. So that didn't pose too much of an issue. But now, here I am amongst people smarter and more educated than I am (in a certain area, anyway), and I just feel... dumb.

I also feel a certain degree of brain fog that has diminished since the early months after giving birth, but is still present nonetheless. Will that ever go away? Am I doomed to feel cotton-brained for the rest of my life? Ugh.

I got my third-year schedule last week. I was really hoping getting it would get me excited about next year, but it did the exact opposite, at least at first. Part of the problem was trying to figure out what to schedule when my husband is away in September. There's a whole thread about this in the General Discussion (Third year scheduling help), so I won't rehash all of it here, but basically I was trying to decide whether to get Surgery out of the way early, but be a single mom for the first week and a half of it, or do it back to back with Medicine at the very end of the year. Neither appealed at all and I got very stressed out about it. I think I've found a reasonable solution. I managed to rework my schedule so that I'll have either Family Med or an easy elective during September. Surgery is still scheduled back to back with Medicine at the end of the year, but I'm going to try to swap it with Ambulatory Care a block earlier to make things a little easier. Anyway, I'm not certain I made the right decision so I don't feel completely at ease, but I'm definitely a lot less stressed than I was before, and I'm actually pretty excited about the elective I have planned in Neonatology. I no longer consider neonatology a career goal (who knows, maybe that will change), but I've been interested in it since I first started thinking about med school. My big brother was born at 28 weeks and I remember always being fascinated with the stories. That's what sparked the interest anyway. At our school Neonatology has no prereqs and is supposed to be an amazing rotation. Plus the hours are about 7-4, which really doesn't sound bad. So that's at least one thing to look forward to!

R is doing so great. I brought her to a bridal shower on Saturday. We drove down after lunch, when she's usually awake. I was hoping she'd sleep so that she'd be able to handle the shower, during her normal nap time. She slept some but not the whole 2 hour ride, so I was convinced she'd be a total grump. Nope! She was a doll the entire time - we were there from 3:30 to 8! She was very tired by the end but never once broke down, and was happy to socialize with everyone. I was so impressed! She still hasn't figured out crawling, but sure is working hard on it. She did manage to take a few backwards crawl steps yesterday. The weather has been really nice so I took her out to the back yard yesterday with a blanket and we hung out for 20 minutes or so (it was a little chilly with the wind). She kept wanting to creep off the quilt onto the grass so she could try to eat it, which I didn't let her do, but it was very cute. Speaking of which, she can creep so fast now - from one room to the next in a matter of seconds! Tonight I enjoyed watching her try really hard to figure out how I got in the little toy mirror she has. She kept craning her neck to look sideways into it until she could see my reflection, and would get really excited, and try to get to me with her mouth, but would get confused when her mouth just hit the mirror. Soooo adorable! I just love my little peach <3

Hubby's birthday is tomorrow. The neighbors are going to take the monitor after R goes to sleep so we can go out for a yummy dinner. Looking forward to it!