Surviving the First Night With a Clubfoot Baby (and What Comes Next)

It was exactly 2:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was wearing maternity leggings that were literally disintegrating at the thighs and Dave’s old college hoodie that smelled faintly of sour milk and desperation. We were three months into this whole parenting a second child thing, and I was sitting on the floor of the nursery crying into a lukewarm mug of French roast while my son Leo thrashed in his crib like a tiny, angry prisoner.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

That was the sound of the heavy metal bar connecting his two tiny white boots, smashing repeatedly against the wooden crib slats. He was screaming. I was crying. Dave was hovering nervously in the doorway holding a tiny allen wrench, whispering loudly about whether we should just take the damn thing off for one night.

NO DAVE WE CANNOT TAKE IT OFF.

Because if you take the brace off, the foot goes back to the way it was, and then you've to do the plaster casts all over again, and if I had to sit through one more hour-long appointment smelling wet fiberglass while my child rage-screamed at a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, I was going to walk into the ocean.

So, we sat there in the dark.

The ultrasound room of doom

Let me back up, because if you're reading this, you probably just had your 20-week anatomy scan and you're currently freaking the hell out in a hospital parking lot. I see you. I was you. I remember the exact texture of the cold blue paper on the exam table when the ultrasound tech suddenly got very, very quiet and started clicking her mouse a hundred times a minute. Which is, like, the universal sign that your life is about to get really stressful.

Dave was sitting in the corner playing Wordle on his phone, completely oblivious, while my brain immediately jumped to the worst possible scenarios.

Our doctor came in and used a lot of Latin words, but what it boiled down to was that Leo’s left foot was turned sharply inward and pointing down. It looked like a little golf club, which is a terrible name for a medical condition but whatever. Apparently, the tendons connecting his leg muscles to his foot bones were just way too tight, kind of like a rubber band that got pulled wrong during the assembly process in my uterus.

I immediately blamed myself, obviously. I drank too much coffee in the first trimester. I didn't eat enough kale. I looked at a microwave while it was running. But my doctor, Dr. Miller—who's a saint and has talked me off many ledges—sat me down and explained that it's just this weird mix of genetics and bad luck, and boys get it twice as often as girls, and honestly they don't really fully understand why it happens.

Uncertainty.

Anyway, the point is, Dr. Miller looked me dead in the eye and said, "Sarah, stop reading weird internet forums from 2004 because this is totally fixable and he's going to run and jump and probably destroy your living room furniture just like his sister did." She even told me that Mia Hamm and Troy Aikman had it, which is cool I guess, though I don't really care about football, I just wanted my kid to be okay.

Plaster casts and absolute chaos

So they use this thing called the Ponseti method. It sounds like an Italian sports car but it's actually just a very long, very exhausting process of gently stretching the baby's foot and wrapping it in a plaster cast from their toes all the way up to their upper thigh.

Yeah, the thigh.

They do this every single week. You go in, they soak the cast off in a little baby bathtub in the sink, the doctor stretches the foot a tiny bit more toward normal, and they put a new cast on. Leo looked like a tiny, extremely grumpy skier.

During these appointments, the baby has to be relatively still, which is hilarious because babies don't do that. The trick is to bring them in starving so you can jam a bottle in their mouth the second the casting starts. We also leaned heavily on the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. Dave would practically wave this thing in Leo's face like a matador to keep him distracted while the doctor worked. Honestly, the panda teether is great because it’s flat enough for tiny newborn hands to actually grip it, and it's easy to wash the inevitable hospital floor germs off it when you drop it four times in one appointment.

Oh, and right before the final cast, they do this thing called an Achilles tenotomy where they basically just snip the heel cord in an outpatient room while the baby sucks on sugar water, and I literally sobbed in the hallway while Dave held him, but it took like ten seconds and then it was over. Moving on.

Dressing a tiny football goalpost

Here's something nobody tells you about the casting phase: you can't put pants on your child.

It's physically impossible to shove a pair of baby jeans over a thick, bent-knee plaster cast. Dave thought we should just buy bigger pants, bless his heart, so he went to Target and bought 18-month sweatpants for our two-month-old, which just resulted in Leo looking like he was wearing a very sad, deflated parachute.

You have to live in snap-crotch bodysuits. You need things that stretch incredibly wide and snap easily over the diaper and the cast. I bought so many of the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesies from Kianao during this phase. They're made with a little bit of elastane so they stretch like absolute crazy, which is exactly what you need when you're trying to maneuver fabric around a rigid plaster thigh. Plus, they don't have sleeves, which was vital because those heavy casts make babies sweat like middle-aged men on a treadmill, and the organic cotton kept him from breaking out in weird rashes.

If you're desperately hunting for clothes that won't make your life harder right now, check out Kianao's organic baby clothing collections, because standard narrow pants will literally make you lose your mind.

The boots and bar nightmare

Okay, back to 2:14 AM.

After a few months of casts, the foot is fixed. It looks perfect! It’s straight! You take a million pictures! And then they hand you the brace.

Because the foot is incredibly stubborn and wants to turn back inward, your baby has to wear this medieval-looking contraption called a "boots and bar" brace for 23 hours a day for three months, and then just during sleep until they're like four or five years old.

The first 48 hours in the brace are straight from hell.

The babies hate it. They're used to kicking their legs independently, and suddenly their feet are locked into shoulder-width shoes connected by a solid metal bar. If they try to kick one leg, the other leg gets yanked with it. They get furious.

And you're terrified of blisters. The doctors drill it into your head: if the heel slips up inside the boot even a tiny millimeter, it'll rub a blister into their skin. If they get a blister, you can't put the boots on. If you can't put the boots on, the foot relapses. If the foot relapses, you go back to casts.

So I became a crazy person about socks. You have to find perfectly smooth, seamless, tall socks. And whatever you do, if you even think about putting baby lotion under those boots, just throw the whole bottle away right now because the cream softens their skin and makes the friction worse and then you'll be dealing with bleeding heels and crying in the doctor's office again.

My best hack? Double socking. Put one thin sock on, then another slightly thicker sock over it to fill any empty space in the boot so the heel doesn't slip. And tighten the middle strap first. Always the middle strap.

Also, buy a bicycle handlebar pad. You know, those cheap foam tubes that go on a BMX bike? Wrap that around the metal bar between their feet. Because otherwise, when you're changing a diaper at 3 AM, your baby will absolutely swing both legs up and crack you right in the jaw with a solid piece of aluminum.

Trying to do normal baby things

The hardest part emotionally isn't the appointments, honestly. It's watching the other babies in your moms' group hit milestones while your kid is literally weighed down by medical gear.

Tummy time was a joke. Leo couldn't easily tuck his knees under him with the bar. He would just lay there like a skydiver in free-fall, screaming into the rug.

Maya, who was three at the time, kept trying to "help" him by bringing him toys he couldn't reach. We ended up getting the Wooden Baby Gym so he could at least lay on his back and bat at things. Honestly? It was just okay for us. It’s beautifully made and didn't clash with my living room rug, but Leo mostly just laid there staring aggressively at the little wooden elephant without really interacting with it for a long time. Maybe he was just too distracted by his heavy feet, or maybe he just wasn't a play gym kind of guy, but it did at least give me ten minutes to drink my coffee before he started crying again.

Eventually, though, they figure it out.

They learn to roll over by swinging the heavy bar for momentum. They learn to crawl, sometimes doing this hilarious army-crawl drag situation. And then, one day, they get the brace reduced to nights-only, and you cry actual tears of joy in the doctor's office.

Leo is four now. He sleeps with his boots and bar every night. He clicks them into the pedals himself. He runs, he jumps off the couch when I specifically tell him not to, and his feet look completely, entirely normal.

It feels like the end of the world when you're sitting in that ultrasound room, but I promise you, it's just a really annoying detour.

Explore more parent-tested baby gear and sustainable essentials at Kianao to help make the weird, messy days a little bit easier.

The messy, honest questions you actually have

Does the foot thing hurt them?
Nope. The doctor swore up and down it isn't painful for babies, just tight. What hurts is when they get frustrated because they want to kick freely and can't, or when they get a blister from the boots. Keep the heels down and pull the socks tight, and they're honestly fine.

How the hell do you change a diaper with the bar on?
You don't take the brace off for diapers! You just lift their butt up by grabbing the actual metal bar—it's basically a very convenient handle. It feels weird at first, but you'll be doing one-handed, half-asleep diaper changes by grabbing the bar in like a week.

Can I take the brace off for just like, one hour for family photos?
During the 23-hour phase? My doctor said absolutely not. We got one hour a day for bathing and letting the skin breathe, and that was it. Just put them in a cute swaddle or put a blanket over their legs for the photos. The relapse rate is way too high to mess around with "just one hour."

What if the heel keeps slipping out of the boot?
Take it off immediately. Check for red marks. Try the double-sock trick I mentioned, make sure you push their heel down firmly before buckling, and pull the middle strap so tight you think you're overdoing it. If it still slips, call your doctor. Don't wait. Blisters are the enemy.

Will they walk on time?
Maybe a little later than average, but not crazy late. Leo walked at 15 months. The brace definitely makes them a bit top-heavy when they're learning to stand, but once they figure out their center of gravity, you won't even be able to tell they had a foot issue. Honestly, my biggest problem now is catching him.