May 24, 2013...Here we goooo!

We took Paisley to UNC for her first appointment when she was only 6 days old.  New clubfoot patients and patients with casts are usually scheduled as early as possible since it takes a little longer with their appointments. So we had a Friday 8am appointment. To some that might not seem so bad, but we live on the coast. Literally 7 miles from the beach, and UNC is about 4 hours away. So we had to leave by 4am to make an 8am appointment, which meant we had to get up at 3 in order to make sure I could feed Paisley before we left and make sure Grammy (my husband's mom) was good to go to take care of our oldest while we were gone. We knew we were in for a LOOOOOOONG day. Especially since we both thought we were only going there for a consultation appointment; meet and greet with doc and such.

We got to her appointment over an hour late because we forgot to account for traffic in Raleigh.  There's no traffic in the sticks where we live, haha. But again, the gracious staff at UNC worked with us and we saw the doctor immediately. And let me say that Dr. Henderson and his staff are awesome!

I'm sure sitting in the exam room we had deer-in-the-headlights looks because everyone does their own research and you always read about the worst case scenarios, and obviously no one wants to see their newborn cut open, so before even looking at her foot Dr. Henderson and his assistant Ruth sat down and explained to us what they saw the course of action being. It was called the Ponseti Method and it did not include surgery, unless every other option failed. I think at that point I finally took my first breath.

But then I stopped breathing again because I was not prepared for what came next. Dr. Henderson took my fragile 6lb baby girl, laid her on the exam table, looked at her foot and pushed her toes so they bent all the way back to touch her shin. I almost passed out! It looked so unnatural, I was sure her foot was broken. My husband made some noise that sounded like, "holy shit" and Dr. Henderson then saw the horrified looks on our faces. He assured us that her foot was supposed to do that, and did the same exact thing to her non-clubfoot. Low and behold her right foot bent all the way back so that her toes touched her shin as well. He explained to us that having her club foot show that much flexibility was an excellent sign, and that he was really optimistic that this would be an easy fix.

Awesome. We were elated. Nice to meet ya doc. When is our next appointment? But our appointment was not over. He looked to his assistant and told her to prep Paisley's foot because her first cast was going on today. Whoa whoa whoa, doc. I want to get a jump on this asap as well but I did not come into this appointment mentally prepared to leave with an infant in a cast.

No less than 5 minutes later there was our little infant with a plaster cast that went from her groin to her toes. She didn't fuss, she didn't cry. In fact she slept through the whole process, which was perfect because I think I was enough of an emotional wreck for the both of us.