Matthew's feet

Just a quick update on Matthew's feet. We visited a new doctor for his clubfoot today since his other doctor told us we could stop bracewear. We know from all our reading and research that the typical recommendation is to wear the braces until age 4-5, to prevent relapse. We are thinking our doctor follows the proper casting technique but hasn't kept up to date on the brace protocol. Anyway, we figured to be safe we would see a doctor that has presented the documentation to Dr. Ponseti to be put on the list of Ponseti Certified doctors. His office is about 2-1/2 hours from here but that's no big deal since we should only have to go 1-2 times/year. He is the only doctor in Michigan on the list.

He checked Matthew's feet, in and out of his shoes, and then watched him walk. He said that the only reason they recommend stopping bracewear early is because of overcorrection and that Matthew is not overcorrected. He added that they used to stop early because of loose ligaments but they have seen some relapse in that case also so they just change the angle of the shoes. Anyway, we don't have either of those 2 issues so we should not stop bracewear. He actually said we should try to keep it on 14-16 hours/day. He thinks Matthew's feet look great though, so I think we'll probably do 12 hours/day the days Matthew goes to daycare and aim for 14-16 the days he is at home.