Naps and Nighttimes

It's official. He is onto naps and night times. He only has to wear his boots during the above. I am so excited for him! It has been a long 5 months but a totally worth it. I am so glad we stuck with the 23hr a day schedule and if anyone is struggling out there just know that it is so worth it to have the doctor say that his feet are so good.

 Check him out with his first really pair of shoes.

3 month appointment

It has been almost 3 months since he finished his surgery and has been wearing the boots. We haven't been to the doctors for that time. We have an appointment on the 16th of November to let us know how his progress is going. I know for myself that when his boots are not on you can't tell that he ever had club feet. His feet so look great and I am so so happy we kept up with it. Will let you know what happens at the appointment. I am hoping for a switch to nap and night time of shoes.

He crawls

His is little Joe crawling 4 days before his 7 month mark. He is wearing his ponseti boots. I am putting this up to let other know that they don't hinder progress. I think if anything that made him crawl faster because he could lunge forward with them.

Ponseti Shoes

Arrrgh! These shoes are way harder to get use to then the casts but on the other end I love love love that he can have time off from wearing them and I feel like his feet are so much better off in the shoes than the casts. He is actually pushing off his feet were as before he treated his legs like they didn't exist! I mean the shoes are only hard because you have to sleep your baby on his back so if you are just starting out with the casts train your baby to sleep on his back because I side slept mine and he is having a hard time adjusting to the back.

Also you really have to make sure that his feet are back up against the back of his shoe. For the first week and still now I have to adjust his shoe if his heel is not in the "view window". I love seeing his face when he takes his shoes off. He kicks for about the whole half hour and I love giving him baths and just snuggling him.

Rocking his ponseti shoes with his cute grandpa socks! 

Enjoying his solids are his kick around!

The casts come off!

3 weeks later..... The casts have come off. I called the hospital to see if I could take the casts off and give him a real bath. They said yes and to not be shocked at the appearance of his legs (after 3 weeks they would look really white). He was so happy to have those casts off. He just kicked and kicked and kicked.

 

Unwinding the reinforced blue casts

Getting ready for his bath

His right foot after taking the casts off

The cast mess... so long!

 

Kisses from Nanny after her bath

 

Kicking away now that both casts are off!

He was fitted for his boots and he starts those on Friday.

Operation Day

Wow. I haven't been really good about keeping up with the blog, probably because I am so relieved that we are almost finished with all of the casts that I feel that I can start to relax... even though we will still be doing foot related things until Little Joe is 2 years old.

Anyways to the day of the surgery. I had to set my alarm to wake up and nurse little Joe until 8:30am. He was no allowed to eat after 8:30am and to be honest I knew that would be the only thing I worried about, him not being allowed to eat. Joe had to go in for his job interview that morning so he was gone. After little Joe had his food we put him in the bath to soak his casts because I had got permission to remove them myself. It was so easy and I really enjoyed doing it. He was so smiley and happy, it made me feel bad that he was going to be in casts for 3 weeks after he had this surgery.

We got ready and he was asleep for most of the morning. Joe got back from his interview right before I was suppose to leave which was fortunate because I didn't want to have to go to the hospital myself. We got to the hospital, got checked in and then had to wait.

Being in the waiting room before little boys surgery was one of the hardest things I had to do. I am going to  try and explain this without sounding dumb. I wanted to cry, except not for my son. The thing was that I had a completely healthy son, even if medicine was not as advanced as it was my son would still have a relatively normal life, I would keep stretching his feet, I would strap his feet or do something to help him use his feet as best I could. In other words I have not ever been worried about the way my sons feet would affect his life, however while in the waiting room I saw a little girl with no feet. I saw a little boy that was being feed through tubes in his belly and his father looked like he hadn't slept in years. I heard mothers taking to nurses like they were old friends, they knew where everything was, they knew how to get food, where to get extra blankets and who was in which room. I realized that to some of the parents in that waiting room the hospital was second nature. It was a second home, it was sleepless nights and wondering how your child would cope in the world, would they date, would they make it to another birthday. And this is why I wanted to cry because I felt so grateful to my Heavenly Father for my son and I prayed and still pray for all those I saw in the waiting room that day.

When son was to be taken in he was so hungry and he was screaming, that was not nice, seeing your son being taken into surgery and screaming his lungs out. We went and grabbed a bite to eat and then came back to wait. About 5 minutes after we got back they came to get his. He was out of surgery. He looked so gorgeous and I gave him so many kisses. He was pretty groggy and I feed him straight away. We stayed in the hospital for about 4 hours afterward to make sure their were no reactions to the anesthetic and that his feet didn't turn purple. It was good to get home but man his casts were so heavy. So so heavy.

Operation next week

Little Joe will have his tendon operation next week on Wednesday. He is ready and I am too if anyone is interested... haha. I have been doing weekly trips to the hospital for two months now and I am ready for some time off. Well we have to be there by 12:30 but his operation might not be for a while. He is not allowed to eat after 8:30am and to be honest I am more worried about him not eating than the operation. He gets cranky as if he doesn't eat.

Keep Little Joe in your prayers.

Sixth Set of Casts

HIS FOOT CAME AROUND!!! SO EXCITED! We have been fasting and praying for his little left foot to loosen up and today when they took the cast off and checked his foot it had indeed loosened and come around. The nurses were very surprised and keep saying over and over how it was awesome that his foot had done it on his own, but we know that our prayers and fasting have been answered. He has one more week of casts next week and then it is the big operation. So excited to be this far along the process and to keep seeing results.

Fifth Set of Casts

Week 5 now. Not much to report. We have the technique down now. Wake up, have a bath, put the feet in wet socks, wrap in plastic bags, go to the hospital,remove casts, have a kick, weigh in time, nurse time then put the  casts back on and home time. His left foot is still quite stiff, he has 3 more weeks of casting, hopefully it will bring his foot around more. I hope so I don't want him to have any more surgery than necessary. He is so cute. He had all 3 of the nurses cooing away at his while he had the casts put on. It was so so cute! He was just talking away to them. Anyway his tendonectomy is set for 3 weeks from today.

Fourth Sets of Casts (Week 4)

So each morning before we head out to get his casts changed we have to soak his casts in a bath for 15mins to loosen the wrappings and then we cover his casts with socks and drive to the hospital... this is so little Joe isn't traumatized by cast cutters and the nurses just can just unwrap the casts. Anyway basically we have to fill the bath really deep and then hold him in the bath until the time is up - SORE ARMS needless to say. So today I decided to try a different approach. I guarantee I will get major smack from Little Joe later in life about this but he loved every minute of it. 

Our fourth week of casts. His right foot is ready to have the tendonectomy but his left foot is still not coming all the way round that they would like. He needs to be able to bring his foot around 70 degrees which they can do with his right foot but his left foot is only at about 45 degrees. We knew that his left foot was a bit stiffer than his right and so it means a couple more weeks of casting which is fine. We will be saying prayers this week that his left foot loosens up a lot more otherwise he might have to have a surgery on his foot to loosen the tendons on the side of his foot so it can come around. I really don't want him to have more surgery than needed but I know that no matter what it will be okay. 

Third set of casts (Week 3)

This week seemed to go unusually fast. We had a little bit of a struggle with getting little Joe to sleep the first couple of nights but I figured it out it was because he wasn't having a proper feed at 6pm and so then he became overtired. After I focused on feeding him from 5-6pm each night he would go down and return to his happy little self. Today again his feet looked amazing. It was pretty funny though because his little legs smelled bad because of the casts, I mean like really bad. haha. But luckily we got him all washed up and then he got to have a good kick around and eat before they put the casts back on. I feel sorry for him a little because it is such a tease that he gets to kick around and have no casts on for like half an hour because then when we have to put them back on he is super wriggly. He is not dumb, he knows what is happening and I am sure he doesn't want it to go back on. Again I just take comfort in the fact that he will thanks us when he can run around later. He has maybe 2-3 weeks of casts left but the doctor said he will most definitely need his tendon snipped so he will have to have casts for 3 weeks before wearing the boots.

Arriving at the hospital ready to take the casts off

Finished taking the casts off

His legs look so good for only two weeks of stretching. I am so proud of my little man.

Weigh in time. He has put on almost half a kilo in one week. There was a little indian boy there getting a cast at the same time and he was serious like half of Little Joes size but they were exactly the same age. 

Handsome little Joe have a sit up after getting his legs all cleaned off and waiting for them to put the  casts on again.

Having a bottle with Nanny.

Time to put the casts back on. 

Yup! This is my little man fast asleep after having his casts put on. He went out about half way through putting the  casts on his right leg. It was so cute.

Second Set of Casts

1 week done 5 to go. It was a hard week adjusting to the casts that little boy had on. It was hard to realize that he wasn't actually broken but that the casts were helping him. He was very heavy to carry around. He had a couple of rough nights were it was like he would wake up and try to kick around and then get upset by the casts. He also had just started to roll over and now because his legs are heavy he wasn't able to continue doing that.

HOWEVER the cool thing is that after just 1 week I saw results when they took the casts off. It was amazing. I could see how they had already started to stretch out. Also it was kind of incredible seeing how much he had grown in a week because they cast him all the way up his thigh but we went in he had gained a lot more thigh.

He loved having his casts off and was kicking the entire time and I couldn't believe how much lighter he was. Nurse Mel was lovely and let us weigh him and then nurse him before we put the next set of casts on. Once again little man was a dream according to Nurse Mel and Katie and they had him put in his casts in no time. Unlike our last appointment their was a lot of other families their today with their children. Their children had various degrees of casting stages and some even only had 1 club foot so it was interesting to see that as well. It gave me a lot of comfort to see the kids walking or running as well and I know things are going to be fine for my son.

Taking the old casts off 

 Before we went we had to soak little Joes feet for 20 minutes in the bath. Then we had to cover his casts with wet socks before coming into the hospital. This allows for the casts to loosen up and they can then unwind the casts instead of using the cast cutter which can freak the babies out. Little Joe didn't even seem to notice them taking the casts off. The cover is to prevent any of the cast bits flicking into his face.

 He is free! Can you see the were the casts stop and the rest of his thighs come in. So funny.

 Week 1 results

 Getting the casts put back on. I expressed some milk so he could eat while everyone was working on him. He seemed very happy with that deal.

 The right foot cast is finished. They called this cast neutral station.

 2nd week of casting completed.

 He is still my handsome little man!

First Set of Casts

Today we went to the Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland. Last Tuesday 5/24/2011 we went to an appointment with a family doctor and he referred us to the Orthopedic Specialist Dr. Stuart Welsh who we found online from the referral of the doctor in Hawaii. Our appointment was amazing. When we got there we meet nurse Mel. She is so lovely. She went over a lot of what we went over with the doctor in Hawaii about the Ponseti method. She was impressed that Joe and I had done a lot of research about the Ponseti method and had also read other peoples blogs about their experiences. After she and Dr. Welsh had looked at his feet they told us that he didn't have severe club foot but instead had a good mild case. On a rating scale with 6 being the worst little Joe scored mostly 1/2 to 1's. I was grateful that Joe and I had been stretching his feet from his birth. Then nurse Mel told us that she would be back with the physiotherapist Katie to cast his feet. I did not expect them to be doing the casting the same day but I was happy to get it started. Little Joe was amazing while they put the casts on, he didn't scream or anything.

Little Joes feet before the casts are put on. Look at how chunky his thighs are!

Holding his little feet in preparation for the cast being put on. My mum got to hold onto his other foot while they did his right foot.

A photo of my little boy with the first cast almost done on his right foot.

 

The right foot cast!

The first cast is finished. Yes it a big cast. He has to leave them on for a week and then they take them off and put them on again in the same day. This will happen each Wednesday for the next 6 weeks.