So here’s the deal if you’re not familiar. Doc McStuffins is a little girl who fancies herself a doctor of toys. She also has a magic stethoscope that brings her toys to life. It’s kind of like Toy Story, but instead of the toys deciding when to act inanimate, Doc holds the power thanks to her magic stethoscope that grants them life. Each episode a different toy gets some kind of malady that Doc diagnoses and cures with her toy know how.

Here’s my problem with the show, though, it’s mythology is sloppy at best. For one thing, it’s not clear what state of consciousness the toys are in when Doc’s magic stethoscope isn’t around. Are they like coma patients experiencing the world as it goes by without being able to do anything about it? Do they essentially “turn off,” existing only when Overlord McStuffins deems them worthy of life? These are the things I think about while my daughter does her best to sing along to the show’s many songs (which is adorable, by the way).

I’m also fuzzy on the range of the stethoscope’s power. Does Doc have to be in the same room as the toys? You’d think the answer to that is yes, but I saw an episode recently where she left a patient in her clinic (a clubhouse in the backyard) overnight with her nurse, a hippo named Hallie. Presumably the two toys were still “alive” even though Doc was in the house. If this is the case, why doesn’t she leave them “on” all the time? Maybe she’s one of those doctors who gets their jollies from being in control of life, even if it is toy life.

I have other, bigger questions. Who gave a child such power? Could the stethoscope work on other inanimate objects? Do other, similar objects of power exist in this world? Could Doc animate all the toys in the world, creating a veritable army — one that she has the knowledge to repair when they inevitably get damaged, by the way — and take over the world? Clearly that’s where the story is heading.

I just realized that the series might all be a hallucination. What if Doc is just imagining all of these things? What if she really is just pretending and we’re taken on the journey through her imaginings? If that was the case, it would answer a lot of my questions because a young girl wouldn’t understand the rules of a magical device and would therefore not bring those elements into her fantasy. I’d like to say I subscribe to that theory now, but I’m still going to watch and wonder.

As I mentioned in a pair of posts about Lucy’s first and second trips to the doctor, we wound up splitting up her vaccine shots. That seemed like the good and responsible thing to do at the time, but what I wasn’t thinking about was the fact that splitting them up meant that I would have to take Lucy in on my own. Thanks to our home birth, there was another set of shots that we were off by an appointment or two. No big deal.

Well, it was kind of a big deal for me because I got super nervous. Last week was the first almost-full week that I stayed home with Lucy on my own while also trying to get work done (we were in New Hampshire on Monday visiting my wife’s parents) and yet our first day together included not only me trying to write a bunch of stuff for my various gigs, but also taking Lucy to the doctor’s office. I got her all set and we went over without incident. She fell asleep on the two minute ride down the street. I sat with Lucy next to me in the waiting room and one little boy kept coming up and looking at her or playing with some of the dangly toys I have on my diaper bag. I smiled at him, but I really wanted him to back off. Sorry kid.

Anyway, the wait took about 20-30 minutes. I know that’s not too too bad when it comes to doctors, but I prefer when they run on time or closer to it. Don’t bullshit me, just tell me when I can come in and get my kid injected. I live down the street it’s no big deal. Maybe I can have them Tweet me in the future when they’re ready? Anyway, the shots themselves were with the doctor we liked thankfully and only took roughly one minute. Seriously, she’s like a ninja with those syringes.

I had to go back this week as well. It didn’t take quite as long this time to get into the office, but once again the appointment itself was with Dr. Ninja, so it took probably a minute. The most impressive part, though, was that Lucy didn’t even cry for this week’s shot. She made a noise, looked a little miffed and that was it! She’s tougher than I am when it comes to shots. She must get it from her mother. All in all it was a good experience, Lucy had no more than an irritable evening as a result of the shots and we’re all caught up now. I’m so proud of her!

One thing I forgot to mention about the first appointment was the nurse. Again, like the doctor, she was nice enough, but would not let us leave the office without taking some free formula. As I’ve mentioned here and there, my wife is breastfeeding, which we explained to her saying we wouldn’t need any formula. She said something like “Well, what if you did?” We stared blankly at her, realizing she wasn’t getting it and just said “Whatever you’ve got.” Our plan was to leave it and the bag of pharmaceutical advertising swag we were provided with in the exam room so they could give it to someone who might actually use it. We would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for that pesky nurse who couldn’t take a hint to save her life. Like I said, nice, but not exactly the kind of medical folks we were looking to work with.

Yesterday however, everything went swimmingly–interesting considering we were put in the Noah and the ark exam room. We went in thinking that Lucy would be getting three vaccines, two shots and one orally because that’s what we were told. This new nurse mentioned something about four shots and one oral vaccine, which we were clearly surprised by. She picked up on this right away and asked if we wanted to split them up, which we both agreed to and appreciated. We’re definitely not opposed to vaccines, but we’d like to spread them out in case Lucy as an adverse reaction. That way we will have automatically narrowed down the potential culprit. By that point we were already better informed and advised than in all of our previous appointment and we were only about five minutes in.

After not having such a great experience the first time around, I called the doc’s office to find out what the deal was. We really liked the first doctor we had interviewed with and assumed we’d be seeing her and didn’t want to deal with the one we had seen the first time around. I didn’t harp or pitch a fit, I just calmly asked what the policy was on who saw which patients. The administrator I talked to was really nice and accommodating and explained to me that they wanted us to be happy and comfortable and to just let them know who we wanted to see when we made our appointments. Since our second appointment was supposed to be with the nurse practitioner, I didn’t need to make a note of who we wanted to see.

But I think they might have noted it anyway because the original doc came in after the nurse left. Mind you, I didn’t say which doctor we had seen and weren’t happy with or even the one we originally met with, but I assume they’ve got all that on file. She came in and was just as great as we remembered. She did pretty much everything different including how she gave Lucy her shots, only one of which seemed to bother her. This doc was clearly a pro. Everything went well and we felt good knowing she would be Lucy’s doctor which makes me feel good because we’ve got three more appointments in the next month to get her caught up on her shots. As it turns out there’s one more she needs because we’re a visit behind because she wasn’t born in a hospital. It’s not a big deal, just something that needs to be factored in. All those shots would have been pretty rough if they were with a doctor we weren’t very comfortable with.

Even though Lucy took the shots pretty well–only crying out with the second one which had a lot of stuff in it by my estimation–she wound up having a pretty rough day after that. She seemed just generally unhappy and uncomfortable, crying a lot more than normal. It was really hard for my wife and I because there’s not much you can do but hold her, rock her and hope it passes, which is basically what happened.  By evening she felt better and so did we, not only because she wasn’t crying so much but also because we knew we had a good doctor in our corner.

Before Lucy was born, my wife did a lot of research about doctors in the area. We narrowed it down to a few and then went through and interviewed the one we liked the best. The doctor we focused on had gotten great reviews online and also happened to be about two whole minutes from our place and about 10-15 from the town we hope to move to (glorious Cornwall). I called the office and the woman I talked to was very nice and said we could come in and talk to the doctor that day. I think the missus was about 6 or 7 months pregnant at the time. My wife and I went in and actually got a really good vibe from the doc and the practice. It’s pretty big which means there are enough exam rooms to take the sick kids so they’re not all sitting out in the waiting room recycling germs. She was also on the same wavelength with us when it came to vaccines, over-prescribing, breastfeeding and home birth among other things, so we were sold.

Fast forward to June 3rd. By this point Lucy is just over a month old. When we interviewed the doctor she said that we should call the day after our daughter was born. I guess this is standard for docs because they want to make sure the babies are all good. However, part of our plan with the midwives involved medical care for mom and baby for a month or two after the birth. They advised us to hold off for a month, hence the distance between birth and visit. The midwives gave us the go-ahead to see the doctors, so the next day my wife called, explained our situation and they had us come in later that day.

We hadn’t expected to be called in so quickly, but with my wife still on maternity leave and my schedule being pretty flexible we were able to make it. The waiting room was fine. They have tablet computers you fill paperwork out on which was kind of a bummer because we had actually filled out hard copies and had to do it again while Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel played (not as bad of a movie as I thought it might be). We didn’t have to wait long and wound up in a room with an under the sea theme.

A very nice nurse came in and did the basic stuff like weighing and measuring Lucy. We waited a few moments and then the doctor came in. But this was not the doctor we had met with, it was another one. She seemed nice enough at first, but when she opened Lucy’s diaper to check her out and seemed stunned by the fact that she was wearing cloth diapers, we started feeling a little funny about her. She was also a bit young, not Doogie Howser young, but you get my drift. The doc also automatically wrote a prescription for vitamins, but didn’t really explain herself well, something about breastfed babies not getting enough vitamins which sounds ridiculous considering we’ve learned mother’s milk is built specifically  for the child and can even include antibodies for sickness the kid is exposed to if they’re at day care or something. She wasn’t bad or mean or judgmental or anything along those lines, but we weren’t thrilled about her possibly being Lucy’s doctor. We still haven’t gotten the prescription filled.

I should note that my wife and I don’t claim to know more than doctors who went to school for a really long time and (hopefully) passed with flying colors. Since we never saw this doc’s credentials, I actually have no idea how qualified she was or how long she’s been practicing. However, from the research we’ve done and the conversations we’ve had, I’ve gotten the impression that doctors and their offices are so intensely paranoid about covering their asses, that they write prescriptions for maladies that don’t necesarrily require them–just like the vitamins for our baby who has shown absolutely no signs of vitamin deficiency. We do believe in vaccines and all that, which leads back to our doctor’s appointment as Lucy got her first shot.

She was freaking out from being naked and THEN had to get a shot. When she got it, I held her in my lap. I had a twofold sense of fear and terror. First, I knew that our daughter was about to feel her second or third real shock of pain (she had to get her heel pricked for a blood thing by the midwives and I’m guessing birth is a little tough). Holding her down while someone poked her and her having no idea what was about to happen was not easy for this poppa. At the same time, I had a strange regression to my own childhood when my fear of needles was at its highest. I used to literally hide behind exam tables to avoid shots which actually worked a time or two. I got over it when I started getting allergy shots in high school and into college, but at that moment, holding my daughter as imminent pain crept up on her, I felt the fear she will probably feel in the future in myself. I wanted to run away. I wanted to hide behind the exam table. I didn’t want to get shot myself, possibly on accident. I did not want to be there. Neither did my screaming baby. A few moments later, it was all over and oddly enough the shot seemed to distract her from whatever had been making her cry before that.

I learned a lot about fatherhood that day. You can’t always protect your child and even the things you do do to protect your child can be painful and misunderstood. You can’t always keep them away from pain. Part of parenting involves betraying your child in one way or another. Their trust in you–especially this young–is so implicit and complete. It’s something that you earn by feeding them on a regular basis and cleaning their poop and making them smile. And then you’ve got to take that trust, get them in a room decorated like the prom from Back To The Future and let someone hurt them. It’s good for them in the long run, but you can’t explain that to a month old baby.

And I can’t explain it to a two month old baby when I have to do it again later today. I’m not looking forward to taking her to the doctor. Thankfully, my wife will be working from home that day and can accompany us. I know I have to be strong, but damn, that’s not easy. Especially when those big blue eyes of hers start filling up with tears. I gotta stay strong, though, that’s what dad’s do.