May 31 - June 14, 2013...Small Plaster Miracles

The first weeks of casting a clubfoot are intense. In most cases you are there every week for a cast change. In our case we were there every week for the first 5 weeks. Paisley was a trooper through all of it.

While at home she was a normal baby. She spit up after taking her bottles. She had blowout diapers. She peed on the changing table for those .337583 seconds that the diapers are off. She observed her new surroundings without any notion that something was "different" about her. She didn't have any adjusting to do. As far as she knew this thing on her leg was supposed to be there. Everyone had one, right? 

Dada and I were the ones who had to adjust. It was different changing diapers because you weren't supposed to let the plaster get wet. So when those blowouts happened it was a mad rush to get her cleaned up so that nothing was sitting against the cast and getting it dirty. There were a few mishaps but we were able to keep her cast pretty clean and even got praise from the UNC staff at how well we did with the casts. Whoo Hoo Go Us!!!!

We also had to be selective with what she wore. Some of the footed onsies would fit around her cast but others did not. If she wore an outfit without pants then we had to find something to wrap her cast in so that it did not cause her other leg/foot to chafe. Luckily someone had gotten me infant leggings for our oldest that I never used, but they finally were useful to cover up Paisley's cast. There are plenty of 0-3month outfits with the tags still on them because we just couldn't make them work with her cast.

Bathing was another change. Paisley did not get a traditional bath for the first 7 weeks of her life. We were able to wipe her down, and lightly sponge bathe her, but nothing more than that for fear of getting any part of her cast wet. Especially since we lived 4 hours away from her doc, it wasn't like we could pop in and get a new cast because one got wet.

Ok Now I'm going to bombard you with lots of progression pictures so you can see what a miracle these simple plaster casts are :)

(Don't mind my wild child's hair)

You can see on her left foot we're using the legging

Take out your average dinner fork and that is the size of Paisley's casts

This was her foot after just ONE WEEK in the cast!!!!

 After another week...

and after a third week...such a flippin miracle

and once we took this picture she had one of her final casts put on.  

That cast was on for a final 2 weeks.