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Today was day one on our journey to correct Mallory's toe walking. This morning we went to the Children's Hospital to see an orthopedic specialist.
I've always known something wasn't quite right, but I let other people's comments and opinions drown out that "mommy voice" we all have deep down inside.
She'll grow out of it... A lot of kids walk on thier toes... It's not a big deal.
I heard these things (and more) so often that I almost started believing them myself, but something kept nagging at me so a couple of months ago, while at the pediatrician, I mentioned it. Our pediatrician looked at Mallory's feet and referred us to the Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon we saw today.
I'm not going to lie, I really thought we'd go in, he'd look at her feet just like the pediatrician did, push on them a few times, and tell us we needed to get her in braces. And I guess that's why people go to the doctor, because that's not exactly how things went.
He did look at her feet and legs, watched her walk, and had her do a few other exercises. He told us that her feet weren't really that bad and that he wasn't feeling a whole lot of resistance. I was surprised, but relieved. It sounded like great news. I felt kind of silly for even being there. But then he asked us if we wanted to go ahead and schedule her surgery. Umm... what?
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So I guess it turns out that although there's no real resistance (which is great news), her brain is telling her feet that she should walk on her toes. Ramsay and I didn't have a whole lot of time to process our options, but for now we've decided to try to correct the problem with "positive reinforcement". We'll have to really watch her over the next six months and correct her every time we see her on her toes. We'll look at her progress when we go back in January and decide our next steps after that.
I have a feeling it's going to be a long six months with many eye rolls from our sassy little thing, but I'm hopeful and really think we can kick this bad habit to the curb by the end of the year.
