oops I missed a month

Well February sure came and went fast! Once again the blog took a backseat to life. We had the opportunity to get pictures done of the boys by Dani of Cleotography. She got amazing shots of all 3 boys, if you are looking for a photographer in the Puyallup area I highly recommend her!


So the most exciting news in February came at Ian's 3 month follow up appointment since being in his shoes and bar. I wasn't sure going in how they would start cutting back on his time wearing them. Dr. Mosca came in and looked at his feet and immediately said "ok we can go to 12 hours a day" I was thrilled since it means now he pretty much only has to wear them to bed. Bring on the cute shoes! I actually had brought a pair with us that he wore out of the hospital. He said his right foot looks like what you would expect a normal corrected club foot to look like but his left foot looks awesome so even better than expected! He is loving his "free feet" time as I like to call it. The guy from orthodics that checked his shoes out this time was not happy with the fit of his original pair and moved him into a smaller size. So we don't have any more problems with his right foot, which is slightly smaller, slipping out of the shoe. He will go back in May to check on his progress. It is SO nice having him free from the bar during the day, he can actually sit in a shopping cart now at the store. There are so many little things that are just easier now it has been wonderful. He is trying so hard to figure out how to crawl, my days are numbered! Even without knowing how to crawl he can scoot and roll around and get to wherever he wants to be already. I can't believe he will be 6 months old on Wednesday!

February was also a bit of a rough month or maybe just a continuation of a rough time for Aidan. I think 3 deployments plus all the time Rick has been gone for training etc. is finally taking its toll on him. If you add it all up he pretty much has been gone for half of Aidan's life. The battles, screaming fits and just general anger is getting worse as time goes on. He tells me he hates me almost daily now. I decided it was time to get him some help because I don't know what else I can do for him. Military One Source has a great program where you can call and get 12 counseling sessions so I called them last week. I really hope talking to someone can help resolve some of the issues we are having at home. Thankfully he is still doing great at school so the problems have not spilled over there but it is probably only a matter of time before they do if we don't do something about it. Unfortunately I am having a hard time getting anyone to call me back to set up his appointments so we may have to get a referral for a different place to try. It is incredibly hard to see your child so angry and hurt and not know what to do to make it better. Another thing I have noticed this deployment is that he really doesn't talk about Rick much at all. In the past he would talk about missing him and want to see him and talk to him. This time when Rick calls or gets on the computer he has very little interest in even talking to him. I wish we could say this will be the last deployment but that just isn't reality.

Another bit of bad news is that Rick may not get his R&R at all. Things are just in the rumor stage but it is a possibility. Of course this is the Army we are talking about so we won't know one way or another until the last minute so as usual it is hurry up and wait.

So this doesn't end completely depressing I would just like to say that I am SO thankful for family. My younger brother and his wife did something totally nice for us just because and I hope they know how much I truly appreciate it. They also want to have Aidan spend some time on the weekends with them which he will be thrilled about. Definitely lightening my load :o)

catching up

Well I keep meaning to come update here but there are only so many hours in the day and blogging hasn't been high on the priority list. I want to go back and talk about Ian and his club foot treatment. Maybe someone else out there who is looking for some info that doesn't come from a medical site will be able to gain something from our experiences.

We found out Ian would be born with bilateral club feet when I had my 20 week ultrasound. It was pretty overwhelming news because the doctors were quick to tell us that club foot can be associated with over 200 different syndromes. From what they could see at that ultrasound nothing else was wrong but we would have to have further ultrasounds to keep checking for other defects. For the next month I spent way too much time on Google searching for as much information as possible about club foot and the treatment. After a while I decided to just quit reading until the echocardiogram ultrasound. That was done at about 24 weeks and thankfully his heart looked perfectly normal. I only had to have one more growth scan after that and they decided that it was a pretty good chance that his club foot was isolated and not associated with anything else. From that point on all we could do was wait for him to be born. We unexpectedly became very familiar with Seattle Children's hospital orthopedics when Aidan broke his elbow. We were able to talk to his doctor who also treats club foot about where we would be starting when Ian was born. Children's uses the Ponseti method for treatment of club foot and has doctors that have trained with Dr. Ponseti so that was great news.

Ian was born on September 17th and was totally healthy. His feet were his only issue. Luckily Madigan and Tricare had no problem with referring him immediately to Children's. He had his first visit with Dr. Mosca at 8 days old and was casted for the first time. At the time Dr. Mosca thought that Ian would need 8 weeks of casting before they would see if he would need a tenotomy or not.
He did great with his casts and hardly fussed when they put them on. Everything I had read said to be prepared for a fussy baby at least the first day but he really could care less about them. The first week went quickly, luckily another doctor who works with Dr. Mosca, Dr. Jinguji works out of the Federal Way clinic twice a week. It was great to not have to drive to Seattle once a week. Dr. J was great for his weekly castings he made us feel at ease and Ian hardly made a peep during any of his appointments. We removed his casts ourselves before his appointments and even after a week it was amazing to see how his feet were changing position.






I wish I had taken more pictures through the process. You can kind of see in this picture how his feet were turned out instead of down like the first casts. This was I think the 5th week of casting.

We went back to Dr. Mosca after 5 weeks of casts and he decided Ian was ready for his tenotomy. This was great news since we expected 8 weeks of casts. He went into his 6th set of casts for the week and we got ready for the surgery. They started by putting numbing cream on his heels and let that sit about 30 minutes. The procedure went very well, Dr. Mosca is definitely good at what he does. He was very quick and Ian did cry but mostly because another doctor had to hold his foot still while the incision was made. He was pretty much over it by the time they put his final casts on. He was fussy the first evening but after that it was just like any other casting. We got a little bit of a break from doctor appointments since the casts that go on after surgery have to be on for 3 weeks.

The day before Thanksgiving Ian was finally done with casts. We went to Children's so he could be fitted for his shoes and bar. He was pretty fussy about his feet being touched but after being in casts so long I'm sure he was a little extra sensitive. We had a rough night the first night in the shoes but after that he got used to them.


It is amazing to see what his feet look like now compared to when he was born. For now he wears his braces full time but as time goes on the wear time will reduce down to night time and nap time.




Enjoying a little time out of the braces. This is what his feet look like today, amazing! He gets to take his shoes off 3 times a day to do stretches and he gets very excited that he can freely move. Much different from the casts.