I feel like with my lack of experience, I'm hurting my babies trying to pop them. I'm pretty good at probing and as long as the baby is sitting relatively still, it's pretty easy to do without injuring them. The only trouble I've run into when probing a ball python is that my male LOVES to poop on me the moment the probe goes in. I had to replace my keyboard because of that. Now, I do all my probing over a towel.