Julie Jay: It’s a drag watching my baby try to crawl, but he’ll get there eventually

Watching the baby attempt to move incrementally from one side of his playmat to the other is so tedious that I have nodded off on more than one occasion, only to wake and see he has moved no more than a few inches. 

The whole process is like cricket. While the baby is obviously being tactical and has some kind of plan in place, it’s not a particularly exciting watch for observers who are itching for something, anything, to happen.

A few years ago, LMFAO’s song ‘Party Rock Anthem’ featured the line, ‘Every day I’m shuffling,’ but I don’t think the band were referring to the kind of snail pace being exhibited in our sitting room on the daily. 

While I haven’t been fretting about it per sé, there’s never any harm in getting a second opinion, because whether it’s choosing my wedding dress or what to worry about as a parent, I take pride in living my life by committee.

And so it was that, upon referral from our public health nurse, I went to see a doctor, who told me that he would probably walk when he was ready, which was unsurprising, but reassuring nonetheless. 

In the doctor’s office, as we discussed his progress, my baby observed the proceedings with a smile and a clapping of hands, oblivious to the fact that his lack of crawling was the subject of scrutiny.

The questions asked at these appointments always make me second-guess our domestic reality. 

Has he been dragging himself up? Is he standing of his own volition? Do I have a husband? 

I tend to fold completely in the face of any level of expertise, which is why I can never advocate for myself when a hairdresser suggests choppy layers and I end up looking like a mushroom.

Part of my fear surrounding these appointments can be traced back to an incident a couple of years ago. I sent my husband in my stead to one of the developmental checks with our eldest when I was off on a work commitment. 

He later told me that he had informed the nurse that our toddler had yet to say anything particularly meaningful or discernible.

My horror was immediate, because, quite frankly, you couldn’t shut my toddler up at the time.

‘I tried to tell him, mammy,’ our toddler announced with a sigh and a dramatic hand gesture. 

My son and I exchanged a look that silently conveyed that as much as he was undoubtedly the personality hire and we enjoyed him greatly, we would never leave Daddy to attend a parent-teacher meeting alone.

For the next six months, this ever-diligent nurse rang to check in on Ted’s speech, and I repeatedly had to explain that my husband’s assessment was less a reflection of my son’s lack of speech and more a reflection of just how much he had been away from home.

“Honestly, listen to him now,” I said during a call, holding up my phone to our toddler, who had just been discussing the secret life of whales, only to go completely silent when confronted with a phone on speaker.

I’m fairly sure the nurse thought I was a bit of a delusional dance mom, but, eventually, after an incident where she rang and our toddler informed her I was just in the toilet doing a number two, but would be out in a minute, she accepted that my insistence had some grounding in reality.

The truth is, our bum-shuffling baby seems happy, and at the risk of sounding like a progressive Scandinavian parent, surely that’s all that matters.

On the eve of his first birthday, he is creeping along just fine, which is less malevolent than it sounds. Just like most insects, babies generally go from creeping to crawling, but the doctor informs me that some go straight from shuffling to walking. 

It’s much like how we went from an iPod shuffle straight to the iPhone back in the noughties during the ‘Enlightenment’.

The one good thing about his not making any sudden movements is that I have fooled myself in to thinking our house needs less baby-proofing than it actually does, because the potential calamity culprit is embracing his sloth era. Once he gets moving, we can kiss goodbye placing things on a coffee table until Kamala Harris finishes her second term in the White House.

If anything, I envy our little Buddha, who has nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there.

Just last night, I watched my husband as he methodically ate around an apple sticker rather than peel it off. Today, I noticed I had never adjusted my car clock to daylight savings, choosing to wait six months until it’s accurate again.

It turns out the baby isn’t the only one embracing their sloth era, and, you know what? In the game of life, slow and steady wins the race. Except if it’s an actual race, then it’s probably best to go fast.