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!

Ugh, I hate my med school sometimes. After all the schedule changes we were alerted that there had been a problem with the add/drop system, so all schedules were reset. From then on we had to email our schedule change requests to the registrar, rather than doing them ourselves online. I managed to get things back the way I had them, except that Neonatology isn't available when I wanted it so I'm signed up for Disabilities Medicine. I'm interested in Disabilities Med, but I was really hoping to get a hospital-based rotation in before Peds, so now I'm trying to switch OB/Gyn or Specialty care (EM + ophtho + ENT) to my first rotation. It will be less of a smooth entry back into clinical life, but at least would help me get my feet wet before I hit the wards for Peds in October. Of course I had to email the registrar so now I'm on waiting lists for those clerkships... so in effect, I have no idea what I'll be doing in July. Part of me hopes I won't get one of the cores so that it will be a nice easy month with Disabilities Med, and the rest of me really wants to get into OB/Gyn or Specialty Care. We shall see...

Things at work have been getting rather uncomfortable. There are a lot of personality conflicts in the lab and tensions run high. It doesn't help that I sit in a room with several other people who are all major parts of the problem. One of them is even my friend, but she is starting to really get on my nerves - she talks non-stop, making it hard to get work done, spends most of her time complaining, is confrontational with M (the biggest problem in the lab), and is generally very immature. So spending my days here is getting increasing difficult, especially as the weather gets more and more spring-like and I wish I could be at home playing with R. I guess it will be good to leave the lab this summer, though I'm still ambivalent about going back to med school and being so far from family.

Speaking of R, she is just perfect as always. She took her first few crawl steps this weekend (actual crawls - knees and hands together). Only a few steps though, and she's mostly just creeping around, but I think the crawling will be here soon. At over 8 months old, she's still not making consonants, which has me a little worried. However she is very verbal and extremely communicative, which makes me think I should just relax and she'll make consonants in her own time.

This spring/summer is going to be absolutely crazy. I can't remember if I've gone over this before, but I'm going to go ahead and do it again:

May 2-12: back to med school town for preclerkship week and to find an apartment and daycare. We'll be driving (8 hours without a baby), and are trying to decide whether to cram it into one day or stop at a motel for the night so R doesn't have to spend the entire day in the car).

May 20-22: fly to Philly for a conference. This will be our first flying experience with R.

June 1-3: I go to Dallas by myself for a conference. It will be my first time away from R and I am NOT looking forward to it

June 6-10: conference in Barcelona. Flying over the Atlantic with a baby will be an interesting experience.

Mid- to late-June: move back to med-school town. If DH gets into the grad program he applied for, he'll be starting classes, too.

July - first clinical rotation. R starts daycare.

August 1-8: fly to Alaska for my brother's wedding. Another long flight with R.

Rest of August I'm on a research elective (phew).

August 30-Sept 5: DH is out of town, leaving R and me to fend for ourselves while I'm on Family Medicine.

You can see why I'm a little stressed out about the coming months. I just hope we can all survive in tact. People keep reassuring me that it will be much harder on DH and me than on R, but I worry about her anyway. I hope we manage to have some fun while we're at it!

I only have time for a quick post now, but I just had to share: my little girl crawled all the way across the living room yesterday, AND pulled herself to standing! I think she still prefers to creep but at least she seems to be experimenting with crawling. Good job little one! I'm a proud momma!

We're having such a wonderful weekend with all this beautiful weather! I took the day off yesterday but brought R by the office in the afternoon to say hi, and we spent about an hour outside in the grass with some of my coworkers. It was her first exposure to grass (we've been outside plenty but I usually have her playing on a blanket) - she wasn't quite sure what to think but definitely had fun. Today we went for another play date with my coworker's son. It's so cute to see her with another baby!

I was planning on taking Monday off as well and taking R to a play group for babies 0-18 months. It's offered through this mother's group in town. They have membership dues but they let you attend two events before joining. I was all excited to go but I just got an email saying that I actually can't, since it's at a member's home and they can't allow non-members to go to events at people's homes for insurance reasons. Not sure what that's all about, but I'm bummed. Now I have to decide whether or not to go to work on Monday, since I don't have an excuse not to anymore

We found out this week that my husband has been accepted to grad school next year He'll be doing a one-year Master of Arts in Teaching program for Science Education. I'm really excited that he got in, and he's happy too, but he also hates school so he's dreading it a little bit. But one year should be manageable, even though it coincides with the toughest year of med school for me - at least I hope it is!

I also found out recently that we've got a spot at the daycare we were hoping for in med school town. We haven't seen it yet (we'll be visiting several when we go back in May) but my friend has her daughter there and she LOVES it. In her words, it was the only place she visited when looking for daycare that didn't make her (my friend) cry. So we're very relieved we got a spot. It's so hard for me to imagine R being in daycare full time though! At least now I know she's home with Daddy. I think it will be a really tough transition for all of us. At least my first few rotations are pretty light, which might help a bit, and we'll move a couple weeks before they start so I should be able to help transition her in (go in with her, half days, etc.).

Last update for now - I submitted a first-author paper mid-March (we had submitted it during the summer but it was rejected from that journal). I checked the status yesterday, and all required reviews are in and the current status is "decision in progress" - eek! It's so hard to wait! I'm hoping for a revise and resubmit, since I don't think I can expect anything better than that. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Well, the paper got rejected, but we turned it around and sent it back out within a week. Hopefully three times is a charm!

We just arrived in med school-town today for my orientation to third year, which will go all this week. Meanwhile DH and DD will look for an apartment. I'm excited in some ways - happy to see my friends, even though they're now a year ahead of me, happy to have a break from the crazy lab politics, but not looking forward to a full week of orientation. Last night was R's first night in a hotel. We aren't used to sleeping in the same room, and in fact DH and I just went to bed when she did so we wouldn't have to worry about keeping her awake! But we all woke up a few times during the night, so it wasn't the most restful. We're staying with friends for the next week and a half, and for tonight at least we'll be sleeping in the same room again, but then our friends go out of town and we can put the portable crib in their room. Hopefully R will continue to survive on an off schedule - we really don't have time to restrict apartment viewings to around her naps. Poor thing...

DH got his schedule for next year, and it's almost as bad as mine. He does student teaching 20 hrs/week in the fall, plus classes until 7pm three nights a week. So even though R will be in daycare and they have extended hours (6:15a-6:30p), we'll definitely need a sitter for evenings on rotations where I'm not out in time to pick her up. Maybe someone at her daycare would like to pick up some extra money? I feel so horrible knowing there will be big chunks of time when she's in daycare 12 hours a day Anyone been through this with their kids? Am I being a horrible mother? Will she be okay?

One thing I need to be sure to do this week is get advice on what kinds of books to get for third year. I especially want to know what to start with, since I'm hoping to do some reviewing before I start back. It's amazing how bad I am at remembering what I've learned - I'm pretty sure if I sat for Step 1 right now I'd fail miserably. Not a good way to start third year. Hopefully I'll catch up...

One last thing... the director of the child psych unit where I've been spending some time invited me to present my research to them. This is really exciting, because I want to impress him - I'd love to do residency there! But, I get back in town a day and a half beforehand, and I am SO not ready. I'm really hoping I can pull something great together, but I'm feeling pretty stressed about it. He did meet my daughter the other day though, and seemed quite taken with her - maybe she'll win me enough brownie points to make up for a less-than-stellar presentation

Well, we found a good apartment, R survived, and now we're in Philly at a conference. My talk went reasonably well - Dr. M said I have a promising career ahead of me. I've started reading the required chapters in the textbook for my Family Medicine rotation, hoping that will at least help me brush up on some really basic knowledge so I'm not totally clueless on day 1. I'm nervous because the other med student I'm rotating with will have just come off peds, so she'll probably be in a better position than me (though infinitely more tired!).

So, daycare: we visited four. One was so-so but didn't have a spot for us, so who cares. One was AWFUL, so it didn't require further thought. Then we saw the university center, and we LOVED it. They keep babies in the infant room until 18 months, have 8 babies in a room to 3 teachers (!!!), are super nice and knowledgable, have really low turnover, and it just seemed perfect. We were pretty high on the wait list - just two ahead of us, but no guarantee for a spot. Then we saw the place we assumed we would be using, since I have a friend who loves it and they already offered us a spot. It was decent, but so chaotic. The baby room had 20 babies (eek!) and 5 teachers, and at 13 months babies go to the young toddler room and start taking one nap a day on a mat. The young toddler room has 15 kids and 3 teachers. The good news is that the people seemed caring and competent - it was controlled chaos. But I just didn't feel great about it. I went home and cried and have just been hoping for a spot at the other place. Well... we got one! Just found out yesterday and I'm sooooo ecstatic! I just know R is going to love it there, and they will take good care of us parents too. Phew!

Unfortunately we were punished for the good news with some bad - DH got his teaching assignment next year and it's an hour commute The daycare we're using opens at 7, which is way too late for me for most of my rotations, so DH will have to do drop-off. Hopefully they won't give him trouble when he tells the school "I do drop-off at 7 so I can be here by 8, no earlier", since school almost certainly starts before then. SIGH.

Oh, about daycare hours. They are open 7-6 but you can only use them for 10 hours max a day, so we will be doing 7-5. DH has class until 7 two nights a week (not three, luckily), so we will have to find someone to pick her up on those nights if I'm not on a light rotation. Here's the issue: even on rotations where I can expect to be out by 4 our 5, there are never guarantees, so it seems like we should have someone lined up from the get-go. But, if I get out early, I'm going to want to pick her up myself and not have the baby-sitter. But I can't very well require someone to be available and then tell them last minute whether they're needed, and not pay them if they're not. Anyone have suggestions on how to deal with this? PM me! I'm nervous about figuring this out!

One week left at the lab (next week), then a week to pack (we decided to save money and NOT get full service packing again - can't remember if I wrote about that before). Then a week in Barcelona, then we move! Phew! We get back from Barcelona on Saturday and move on Tuesday. Luckily my dad will visit Sunday through Tuesday to help out with R while we finish things up, though we're hoping to be fully packed before we go to Barcelona. Also, we have to pay for the whole month of June at our current place, so if we can't leave on the 15th exactly it will be okay, though DH does start classes on the 21st so we'd like to keep on schedule if at all possible.

Things are definitely crazy but have been falling into place relatively nicely and R is taking it all in stride - she's such a wonderful little girl! Here's to all the adventure ahead!