My Kids Club Feet and 7 Other Useless Bits of Info About Me...and a lovely award.....

There are some people that you meet blogging and you just know they are the type of people you would have over for coffee if they lived nearby.  Authentic, honest and inspiring.  Li from Creamy Whites is one of those people.  I was thrilled to see that she had gotten this award and touched that she passed it on to me.  Thanks Li.

I have to tell you 7 things about me.  Having done this before, I struggle to find 7 new and somewhat interesting facts about mself.  But I endeavored to find some minutely interesting bits.......

1.  I have lived in 19 houses.  I am 49, so if you do the math, thats one every 2.5 years. 16 of them were in my first 23 years.  Thats a lot of moving.!

2.  I have lived in 3 countries.  Kenya, England and Canada

3.  My son was born with a dislocated hip and club feet.  For the hip, he just had a splint for a couple of weeks. For his feet he wore casts on his legs and feet for 2 months. People would stare at me as if I had broken his legs.........

 

www.pediatricsabout.com

This is not his photo- for some reason I seldom took pictures of his feet.......the ones I do have are in a huge box of hundreds of baby pics. But this is exactly what he looked like. Every 2 weeks, I had to sit him in a basin of water and soak the old ones off.  Then I could kiss his toes for a couple of hours before I went to the fracture clinic to get new ones on.  This was 25 years ago.  They used to allow smoking in the clinic....and those of you who have been to a hospital fracture clinic know how many hours you would wait......I would complain about the smoke and they would let me wait in an unused room.  They would take him from me (2 weeks old) and I would hear him cry and cry as they put new casts on him.  They didn't hurt him, he just didn't like to be held still or be without me.  They apply the wet cast, then gently bend the feet into shape........ The waiting room would look in horror when they brought this infant to me, legs heavy and dangling like a frog, both of us sobbing...........Now I look back and think if that was all that was wrong with my baby, why was I not grateful instead of bawling....maybe those post baby hormones...

 He was not a happy baby with these on.  Yes, people would sign them.  Baby poop would leak on them, they were hot and heavy.  I didn't know his real weight for months.  He came out of those and went right into ortho boots which looked like backwards boots.  Kindly women would stop me in the mall and tell me I had his shoes on the wrong feet.  He also had to wear shoes (with a big bar connecting them and forcing his legs apart) to bed each night as he had tibia torsion (crooked legs).  He didn't mind this, but would get a shoe stuck in the crib bars (different regulations back then for cribs).  I was promised by the surgeon, that I would never have to deal with feet like this again.....this was a fluke and one of....a chance in a million.

4.  Twenty One months later, my daughter was born.  The first thing I did was look at her feet.  The second thing I did was say...."oh oh....she has club feet".......the next morning I walked down the hall from maternity to the fracture clinic with Ky......

5.  I found my father's family 2 years ago by way of the internet.  They live in Nottingham and Australia and Chicago amongst other places.  There are loads and loads of them.  Meeting "your people" is really weird.....they look like you, or your kids.....

6. One of my worst jobs was working for a rectal surgeon.  I would sometimes have to leave my desk and go hold butt cheeks apart for a proceedure. 

7.  I have low B12.  My husband has to give me a needle each month.  I am a big chicken over this and scream for the entire minute it takes (B12 is quite thick and takes a little time).  I love the B12....like a little energy boost...don't know why I scream.

I have to nominate some other fine bloggers, so here are the ones I would like to pass this on to..

Home and Harmony

Tom Stephenson

Lou Boos and Shoes

Erin's Art and Gardens

Cottage on Rosewood

Decor Happy

Shabby Vintage Junk

Cranberry Cottage