Casts and Braces

Monday was a hard day for little Xan. We scheduled his circumcision for 11, and our pediatrician scheduled an orthopedic visit for him at 9:30. Turns out they wasted no time getting the first set of casts on, so he ended up with a double whammy that morning.

Here are his feet before the casting:

While his club feet are not a blessing, the fact that the technology to fix club feet is a wonderful blessing. The standard technique used is the Ponseti Method. That is what our doctor will be using. He says he gets 5-7 babies with club feet a year. Not all that much, but not all that rare either.

Xan will have his left leg in casts for 8 weeks total, getting a new cast each week. Each new cast allows them to move and mold the ankle a little at a time. At week 6, they will do very minor surgery to release the tendon, allowing them to move everything to its final position.

The right leg isn't quite as severe and so will only need 6 weeks of casting, with a couple weeks mixed in without a cast until the left leg catches up.

Now the big question... How many people does it take to put a plaster cast on a newborn?

Apparently 4. The doctor, his two techs, and me! (He needed 5 at the beginning when Alene was feeding him a bottle at to keep him calm!)

Happy that we're done getting them on!

Xan certainly wasn't himself with so many traumatic things happening to him that day, so we decided to show him and his cast a little love:

Once both legs are done with theirs casts, both legs will be stuck in boots on a board 23/7 (yes, that's one hour shy of 24/7) for 3 months! The braces looking like:

Once the 3 months of nearly constant boot wearing are over, for the next 3 years, he'll only have to wear the boots at bedtime and nap time. Pretty strict, but definitely do-able and worth a brighter future!