We made it through a week with casts, so it was time to head back for more! More watching the forecast like a hawk, this time with an appointment change so we could get past the mountains before snow hit, and it was time to drive down to Salt Lake City again. This time we made it in a day and generally travel went smoother — Adelina even fell asleep on the way home!

So this is what Jonas’ poor little feet looked like after a week in casts.

The photo doesn’t actually look half bad, but his poor ankles were quite purple and bruised. He handled the process pretty well though, and has generally taken to his second set of casts quite well compared to last time: I guess we’re all getting the hang of this.

Here’s how it works: the nurse uses a saw that has two discs that vibrate and shred the cast — they are pretty much impossible to cut skin with, the nurse demonstrated by scraping it on the palm of her hand!

Then she splits the casts open, which she explained can be a little unpleasant since the baby’s knees get stiff from holding that position for so long. He didn’t see too upset though, and generally it went easily enough.

Then you get a chance to give your baby a proper bath — poor kid can only have sponge baths otherwise. Adelina was very interested in helping with that! (Yes, she was in PJs… we literally grabbed her out of bed at 6 AM and got in the car. Long day!)

Honestly the toughest part was putting on new casts: you could tell his poor feet were pretty sore and he did not enjoy having them handled so soon. But even then he calmed down after a little while and pretty much fell asleep.

We decided to keep his first casts: someday it’ll be pretty neat to see how far he’s come and how he’s grown.

And that was pretty much it — we were on our way home after that! And I’m hopeful at this point he won’t need the maximum amount of casts: the doctor said his feet were stretching nicely at this point, so we’ll see how it goes! One can hope, right?