Elijah had his six month checkup today and follow up for his incurable diaper rash. Everything was going fine, at least as fine as taking two small children to the doctor when one of them should be sleeping and being stuck in a tiny room filled with things that two year olds aren't supposed to touch while waiting for 45 minutes for the nurse and then the doctor and then the nurse... Ugh.

I have to admit I find well-baby checks pretty stupid. I'm grateful for health insurance and I definitely believe in preventative care, but give me a break. Just give him the vaccine and let me go home. So the doctor comes in and she'd asking me medically stupid questions about his development, "does he turn his head toward noise?", "does he recognize family members?" etc. I'm answering those while trying to keep Eli from rolling off the exam table and Ben from pulling out the stirrups. I find these to be dumb, but at least I can justify them as being developmentally significant.

Then she starts veering away from questions that have any kind of medical merit. Here is where I admit to a character flaw. I will, without guilt, remorse, or second thoughts lie to doctors. If something is not significant, but it is stupid I will tell them whatever they want to hear that will get me out of there as quickly as possible. I hate stupid doctors. I especially hate it when they are promoting something that has no basis in reality. Excuse me for a radical idea, but I think that doctors should have accurate and up to date information.

Here are the questions she asked me that started to get on my nerves.

"Is he sleeping through the night?" I say that sometimes he does, most nights he wakes up once to eat. She clucks her tongue and says he doesn't need this anymore. (I admit this question makes me huffy. I *hate* it when doctors/people act like waking up to eat during the night is a character flaw in my infant. I readily and occassionally excessively defend my son's right to be hungry.) I explain to her that he sleeps on average between 12-14 hours a night and eating once during that time doesn't seem to be extreme. She nods, says he doesn't need it, and makes a note on his chart which I assume reads "child suffers from having a hippie mother".

"Have you started solids yet?" There's nothing wrong with this question, it's the follow up conversation that starts to get stupid. This is a fight I'm not interested in having with her so I just start lying. She asks if I started with cereal. I say yes. (Untrue) The reason people reccomend this is because rice cereal is very unallergenic. So are fruit and vegetables and unlike rice cereal they are not disgusting. Babies will actually eat them. Rice cereal is nasty and neither of my chidlren have had any interest in eating in plain.  She asks if I give him vegetables before fruit. Adding that if you don't do this they won't learn to eat vegetables. I say yes. (Untrue) This is just a stupid thing to say. It's not true and it annoys me. Then she asks me if I'm giving him yogurt yet! I know you can give babies yogurt bef ore regular dairy, but first of all not until nine months and seeing as my son already has eczema and Ben had a hard time with dairy until he was over two years old I'm not giving him a drop of milk in any form until he's at least a year old.

Then she started into safety precautions. This is where I almost lost it. She was very serious about it all. I've had other doctors start to go into this kind of thing, but usually they kind of laugh and ask if you have any questions about childproofing or safety things. Not this woman. Maybe I was looking especially idiotic this day or something, but I did have Ben with me and he clearly has all of appendages and wasn't looking any worse for the wear after having survived my mothering for 2.5 years.

"You don't leave him unattended by any water, do you?" I laugh and then realize that she's actually waiting for me to say no. So I do. Meanwhile thinking: Well, sometimes I put his floaties on him, drop him in the pool, and then run inside to get my martini.  "You don't leave them alone together, do you?" And, I do leave them alone together, but I just said no like the idea had never crossed my brain. However, if she thinks that everytime I need run upstairs and grab something that I'm going to carry Eli up and deal with disengaging Ben from whatever he's playing with, wait for him to walk up the stairs "I don't need help mom!", have him start crying when we get upstairs and he can't play because I just need to grab something, wait for him to walk down the stairs, "by myself!" and then get him playing with another toy, and interest Eli in something else then she's got another thing coming. Now, generally, I'll just grab Eli and take him up, but not always. If Ben is "into" whatever he's doing, or Eli is playing in the bouncy seat you can bet your last dollar that I'm leaving them where they are for thirty seconds. Now, I'm going to leave them alone while I run to the store or take a jog, but the idea is definitely tempting! :)  "He sleeps in his own bed, right?" He absolutely does. Except when he won't and then if that means he needs to sleep with me I'm more than willing to try that out like we did for the first three months of his life, but I left that all out. "You have all your outlets covered?" No, that's how we teach cause and effect. We give them a knife and show them how to stick it in there to get them started. Give me some credit. This is actually one of the only childproofing precautions that we've taken. :) "And you keep your medicine and cleaning stuff out of reach?" Oh yes. The bleach is in baby bottles beside the bookshelf and the iron tablets and aspirin are in a bowl on the counter beside the M&Ms. And then here was the kicker. "You always use child safety seats and buckle them up?" Well, Ben is always buckled because the driver has to be buckled so that takes care of that and we usually just secure Eli with bungee cords in the back.

Suffice it to say that I won't miss this doctor when we leave. Judas priest!