We welcomed our newest addition very early in the AM on May 18, 2013. Not to be out-done by her older sister little miss Paisley only took about 45 mins to make her grand entrance into this world. The birth was as planned and Mama and Dada had bragging rights that despite being the 7th woman in labor at the hospital that night we were the fastest birth!! Whoo Hoo go us!!!!
We didn't take any pictures of her foot when she was first born (don't worry I've got plenty of before and after/progression pictures coming) but you can tell from the pic above that her left foot (the one at the top of the pic) is turned inward. You shouldn't be able to see the bottom of her foot and toes at that angle. Other than the foot she born perfectly healthy and happy :)
As is customary the pediatrician stopped by the following day to let us know how all her vitals looked before, during and after birth, and gave the usual rundown of what Paisley would need before being discharged. We asked about the referral to see a Pediatric Orthopedic specialist and she said she should put it in that afternoon. We still had no idea whether Tricare would send us to UNC or up to the Naval Hospital in Virginia, but we expressed that we wanted to be seen as soon as possible in order to start the correction process. We thanked her and went about our business, still in shock that we were now responsible for 2 little lives.
Paisley did great with all her tests and she was breastfeeding pretty well so we were able to go home pretty quickly. Once home we still hadn't heard anything from Tricare regarding our referral so my husband made a call. Come to find out that the pediatrician had not put the referral in as urgent (she hadn't even put it in that afternoon like she claimed), even though we explained to her that we wanted to start as quickly as possible. So according to the Tricare system we would have to wait for all the red tape to be processed before we could even get an appointment at UNC (at least we knew where we would be going), and that could take 4-6 weeks!!! This was not what we expected. Everything we had read online was that the sooner you get baby into a cast the better because all their bones and ligaments are extremely pliable and more easily corrected. Waiting 6 weeks was only going to do her more harm.
So I had my new-mommy-hormonal-breakdown fearing that my daughter's foot was now going to be turned inward forever. But thank goodness for my husband, he decided screw the system and went directly to the source. He called UNC, explained to them what had happened and they gave us an appt immediately. Seriously, they are amazing people over there. I'm sure getting an appointment without having the proper referral created more work for someone, but they wanted to see Paisley as soon as possible. All we had to do was backtrack a little with her pediatrician (not the one at Naval, we switched to an out in town provider as soon as we could) and they would correct everything for us. They held true to their word because after that all her referrals and appointments went smoothly.
No comments:
Post a Comment