I know Jay we heard the same "horror" stories as well about Royals. But because they were a reasonably sized snake and nicely heavy bodied rather than slim we decided it was the right snake for us.

We now have two of them and a third soon and they have turned out to be absolutely wonderful! Even our 4 year old handles the snakes with supervision of course. As far as feeding and shedding issues, if your husbandry is right on and the snake is not overly stressed, that seems to not be such a big issue. It certainly hasn't been with our two.

Two weeks isn't a lot of time for a baby to settle in fully really, as far as I've heard (I am a relative newcomer to this hobby). It's probably pretty scared. Adam maybe could post about his newspaper ball trick for settling in nervous snakes. From what I've read here it's a pure winner. If you use the search feature as well you'll find tons of threads with information you might find handy.

From what we've seen with our two ball pythons, going slow and steady with them seems best.

Best of luck with your new baby!

~~Jo~~