More casts

On Monday we went to Tufts for a new cast and a hand appointment for Elias. His foot is progressing, slowly but surely. The doctor said "this is defintiely an arthogypotic foot", meaning its much more rigid and resistent to change. It IS progressing with every cast, but its not moving as quickly as it would if it were just clubbed feet not associated with a syndrome. So we're going to continue casting to get as much correction as possibly before surgery is necessary. Surgery is our last option. The less invasive the procedures and surgeries are, the more normal and natural his foot will be. On the other hand, the more they have to do surgically, the more stiff his foot will be as he grows and develops as time goes on. So like I said, surgery will only be after we're confident casting has taken his feet as far as they can go. With that said, the doctor said he will most likely need a surgery in a couple months after a few more casts. Its just way to tight and resistent, and casting will only do so much for him. So we'll see. Hopefully his casts do enough for him to need only minimal amounts of surgical attention.

Then we met with the hand doctor for his right wrist that he likes to hold bent and his left thumb that is basically always stuck to his palm. His right wrist however is improving on its own, and it doesnt look like it'll need much attention, other then some exercising. He's holding it more and more in the neutral position (not bent), and I think him now starting to move his arms and hands more is helping a lot. Regarding his left thumb...the doctor said he wants to put his thumb in a series of casts, similar to his foot, to try and stretch it out. Once its stretched to a point where he likes it, they'll give him a nifty little splint to wear all the time. Thankfully, this splint will just be for his thumb, and he'll have full mobility of the rest of his fingers. I'm excited for this because with his other splints we came home from the hospital with, it completely tied down his fingers and he couldnt move them at all. So he can still practice touching and grabbing things. Then once he's around a year old, the doctor said he'll need a surgery to release the thumb. I'm not sure about the details of the surgery (seeing as its almost a year away) but similarly to the feet, we want to do as much with casting first before surgery is needed.

In other news, Elias smiled for the first time Saturday night. And every day since he's been doing it more and more. Every time we grab the video camera to film it though, he wont do it! I swear, its like babys just know when to turn it on and off.