Casts off!!

On Thursday, July 5, Vivian got her casts off. She wasn't happy about the loud noise the saw produced but she was thrilled to see her legs and feet.

The scar from the heel cord release surgery is small and looks good. Vivian's doctor, Dr. W, was happy with the way her feet looked. They are supposed to look over corrected. It looks like she has flat feet. She was rubbed her legs along her carseat the whole way home, even in her sleep:). I let her soak in the bath for ten minutes and scrubbed off a LOT of dead skin. She got irritated with me so I decided I could work on her dead skin scrub later. She really enjoyed castless and shoeless playmat time!

Unfortunately we had to get fitted for new Denis Brown shoes & bar on Friday. The most important thing to have before you get fitted is the right size socks. It's super important because the socks will be on her feet 23 hours a day with snug shoes. The first time around with the shoes her feet were so small the only socks that worked well were Carters newborn socks. Her feet have grown in the past few months. I have tried 5 different kinds of socks in the past 24 hours. The Gap makes two different kinds of socks for girls in 0-6 month size. We like the one without the cuff. The ones with the cuffs are way to loose.

I've read about seamless socks but they are expensive! It's summer time and the temperature is a hundred degrees. To keep her feet dry I might have to change her socks a couple of times a day. I went sock shopping over the weekend and luckily Gymboree was having their summer clearance. Most of their socks were 50 cents a pair. I have yet to use them but they look like they will work great with the new shoes. Did I over do it? The seamless tube sock set I was looking at cost $30 for two pairs. I spent $8 for 16 pairs of socks. Not bad.

I will update again in a few days about the shoe & bar process.

Life with Club Feet & Hip Dysplasia

Vivian was born early so we started out our club foot journey with these fashionable boots in the NICU. The therapist made special boots for Vivian every week.

We first met with our pediatric orthopedic surgeon two weeks after Vivian left the NICU. The doctor used the ponseti method to treat Vivian. The goal was 6 weeks of casting and a posible heel cord release surgery. Vivian was also born with hip dyplasia so she was already in a pavlik harness.

After 6 weeks of casting the doctor decide to do the heel cord release surgery. He also wanted to do a closed reduction on her hip. We got 2 birds with one stone. This tortuous cast is called a Spica cast. If you think the regular leg casting for club feet sucks -think again. This plaster cast consumed poor Vivian. 

After 6 weeks of the spica we were scheduled to get a MRI of the hip and a new Spica. Unfortunately the Spica was not doing its job so Vivian will have to have open hip surgery when she is bigger.

Here she is with her Denis Brown shoes and bar. I hated them. She was wearing the smallest shoes they make (which was not small enough for her tiny feet). Her heels would always slip up. We spent a lot of time fixing her shoes. After two months of wearing these shoes we found out her heel cords had tightened up. We had to do another heel cord release surgery;( I felt awful like it was my fault her stupid shoes didn't work. We did the 2nd surgery the first week of June '12. Next week we are scheduled to get her cast off. Hopefully we can find shoes that fit well and work!!

This is a picture from yesterday. Her casts are purple. 

 I have to put socks on the casts most of time because they tear up my arms.

22 week Ultrasound shows Club Foot

I remember the day my high risk doctor said "oh it looks like he/she (that was my daughters nickname before we knew the sex) has clubfoot." The doctor went on to tell me information about my cervix and didn't say another thing about the clubfoot. I tried not to panic when I left the office and immediately googled clubfoot on my iphone. Really out of all the things that can go wrong with a high risk pregnancy clubfoot was the least of my concerns. We had ultrasounds every week and we eventually found out that my daughter had bilateral club feet. Club foot is a common birth defect. One in every thousand births have a form of club foot. Does that number make a parent feel any better? Of course not. I think this news would've been a thousand times worse if I didn't have problems with pregnancies to begin with. Every parent wants a healthy baby. Having a birth defect that is easily fixable was not going to bring this momma down.

History

High risk pregnancies are very stressful.  I was diagnosed with an Incompetant Cervix when I lost my first baby at 20 weeks. I had my son at 37 weeks but was on bedrest for about 4 months. Eleven years after having my son, my husband and I decided we really wanted to have a second child. We knew that bedrest might be a part of the pregnancy, but we were hopeful that a cerclage and p17 shots would keep me off of bedrest.