Stop calling me Shirley

My major discovery since becoming a parent is this: everyone knows how to take care of your child better than you do. If I happened to mention to a felon, convicted of murder, arson, drug trafficking, treason, and music piracy, that I had recently had a baby, he would offer advice on how to feed, burp, clothe, soothe, and quiet a newborn (most of which would involve murdering drifters by setting them afire in their cardboard boxes, combining the ashes with methamphetamine so that the sales will directly provide Afgani insurgents with Ipods containing every Jonas Brother song ever written so that they can continue to find reasons to hate America. Babies find this type of behavior VERY soothing). It is apparently something that everyone in the world knows, except for new parents. New parents are incredibly dumb; we can barely manage to breathe through our mouths and drag our knuckles across the floor to relieve ourselves when nature strikes us. How can we possibly know how to provide the delicate care a brand new human being requires?

Anyway,as I have also discovered, babies are surprisingly flexible. The boy is a living Stretch Armstrong. When I feed him, I hold him like a guitar, head in my left hand, my right doing all the moving. His left arm usually stretches out behind mine, so that he can do things like reach up and grab an handful of my armpit hair and tug, or gently tickle my underarm area so that it's all I can do not to drop him on the floor while I giggle uncontrollably. But when he isn't moving his arm, it frequently ends up in positions that would cause Circe de Sole performers to gasp in horror. As long as he's eating, he is happy. If liquid, for whatever reasons, be it from my attempting to change the channel, from Mother Nature's attempt at drowning the South, from the Lord Jesus Christ returning in glorious Rapture, stops filling his belly with delightful formula, he is as offended at as a Fox News independent. It is at that point that his body ceases to be Stretch Armstrong and becomes the Immovable Object. His legs stiffen, his back arches, and his face contorts. The screams soon follow.

Last Friday, I got a call from Shirley/Sally Jackson at Jack's day care. She's some sort of social worker and, in my humble opinion, a very unpleasant person. She was extremely concerned about Jack.

"Have you noticed his rigidity?" she asked me, with insistence. I thought to myself that he does tend to be a little uncompromising in his principles, specifically regarding formula and napping, but he generally makes his points known without resorting to ad hominiem attacks, so I responded "Yes, I've noticed it a little bit."

"Who is your pediatrician?" she asked, desperately.

"Signal Mountain Pediatrics. Dr. Jones." I smiled to myself, thinking about Short Round and the Temple of Doom, before Shirley/Sally interrupted me.

"Well you need to tell him that his child care provider would like to have him examined for excessive stiffness, particularly in his back and hips," she said.

Not knowing what to say really, I agreed to call the pediatrician and thought that was that.

Now, again, I hadn't noticed anything excessive. Sure, he gets angry and stiff when being fed, but when he's happy he is perfectly limp and manageable. So, naturally, I was worried about him and his apparent developmental disability. I spent the next hour searching for his "symptoms." I left work worried that he had: spinal meningitis, cerebral palsy, Chlamydia, West African Monkey Flu, and the Ebola virus. I met Rachel at the grocery store, told her Shirley/Sally's concern, and went to pick Jack up.

Rachel decided to check with Shirley/Sally at her office. Shirley/Sally is a twitchy, older lady who must be very unhappy. Rather than doing anything to comfort our collective worries, she merely exacerbated them by claiming that Jack "is not at all typical" and that "he needs to see a specialist" and if our pediatrician refused to refer to a specialist "we need to find a new doctor." Rachel is an emotional person; she gets upset easy. So, of course, she started to cry. We were clearly done with the conversation, but Shirley/Sally wasn't ready to ease our fears; she followed us out of her office, repeating that he wasn't developing correctly but "that there was another little girl in the center who had the same problem but she's getting better, SLOWLY." She wasn't interested in telling us "it'll be ok" or "we're just a little concerned and think you should look into it." No, Jack, was in serious danger and he might just be turning into a lizard.

Well.

We took him to the pediatrician on Monday, after a long weekend of worry. He's fine. His reflux medication might need an increase. But he doesn't have any developmental problems; he's a perfectly healthy 2 month old baby.

Shirley/Sally doesn't believe us. She practically rolled her eyes at the news. In fact, she called Rachel a day later and asked her to come see Jack because he was crying. CRYING.

I'm not sure where Shirley/Sally received her medical degree.

Dr. Jones got hers at UT and did her residency in Washington.

I don't think this battle is over yet.

It might not be over until I make Shirley/Sally cry. I don't think it's going to be hard.