you know what?

bathing a big 6 1/2 year old with a big heavy plaster cast on one leg...a LOT harder than doing an infant or 3 year old. or even a 4 year old.

a LOT.


(sorry i've been so MIA lately...not much energy left for sewing/crafting/photography right now.)

and now i'm annoying even myself...

so i had a whole big blog post written for today.
and then i thought about it a little more.

i can kind of sum it up for you: "whinewhinewhinewhinewhineywhine".

so i scrapped it.

i'll give you the cliff notes version instead:
meet tiny tim.

she's my middle child. #3. a goofball with an easy laugh, a happy spirit and an easy-going attitude.

sometimes we call her ava. a lot of the time we call her tiny tim. and this is why:
she was born with a clubfoot.
(yes, we enjoy dark humor like that)

i have very few photos of  her casts & braces...and only one of her uncorrected foot. it's not something you think you'll ever want to remember...but it turns out--you do.

it was unexpected, meaning our one and only prenatal ultrasound with her didn't catch it.
we used a non-surgical treatment method to correct her foot and it worked just fine.(that was casts # 1-9)

she wore this brace 23 hours a day for a long time...then 21 hours a day...then 18...then nights and naps. then nighttime only until she was 5. she still has a brace she wears during the day, and a different one for nighttime.

until she was 3--then it started to relapse. at that point we flew her halfway across the country for treatment with a new doctor--one who specialized in older children with relapses. (casts #10-12)

about a year later it relapsed again. fortunately by then we had found a local doctor (45 min drive vs. 3 hr. plane ride) who was/is awesome. that was casts #13-18.

last friday was another "foot checkup".
guess what?

presenting cast #19, or as i like to call it~

{Clubfoot Correction}

~2011 Edition~

this is ONE.STUBBORN.FOOT.

but it's cool, you know?
i told her we'll just lay in bed together and boss everyone else around. gimpy one and gimpy two.

because this cast is for clubfoot correction it's bent at the knee and at the ankle to hold her foot in the right position. looks comfy, eh?

we may even head to walmart and race on the electric carts.

we like to keep things interesting in the googiehaus.

would you like some cheese with that whine?

well, it looks like i'm in for the long haul.

we tried muscle relaxers.

nada.

went to the midwife again (i'm on 2 week visits now, which is an encouraging sign--we're GETTING THERE). she said forget the muscle relaxers, we're going to switch to straight up pain relief at this point and see what the physical therapist can do.

so i went to physical therapy. it's really not encouraging when the therapist has you do bunches of different movements to try and isolate your issue, and then sits and stares at you with what can only be described as a 'stumped' look on her face.

she said it's not my hip, it's not muscular, it's not sciatica. all of which i knew--but it's nice to feel validated. :o)
looks like somewhere in my very very lower back--probably my sacrum--there is a nerve being irritated.

'irritated', huh?
try 'ticked off to the highest degree'. angered like a two year old who was told no more candy. like a teenager who got the car keys taken away. like a pms-ing woman who can't find any chocolate in the house. like a pregnant woman who's husband won't go get her a milkshake from mcdonald's at 10:30pm.
you know, superduperfuriouslyangry.

and so she did some deep tissue ultrasound heating thingy, and had me do a bunch of different stretches to try and relieve pressure on the area.
when i left i was in a lot of pain.
by the time i picked up the kiddos and got home i could barely walk.
by the time i got in the house and to my bedroom i literally could not take my shoes off or climb into my bed. i was crying because it hurt so badly, and my poor 10 year old daughter had to help me undress and get in my bed.
i took 2 tylenol and called googiedaddy. i had to wait until he came home and the tylenol wore off before i could move on to the tylenol 3 to hopefully get some relief.
i spent the entire night laying in bed in massive amounts of pain. the one time i got up to pee googiedaddy had to practically carry me there and back as i cried the whole way.

needless to say i'm a bit leary of trying that again. (i'm going to call the therapist today and talk to her about it.)

i don't consider myself a wimp with pain. sure, i don't like pain. who does? but i've gone through one mostly and three completely pain-med free deliveries. the last one induced with pitocin and still no pain meds.

this.hurts.

there's no other way to say it.
and i'm tired. i'm tired of being in pain. i'm tired of crying. i'm tired of being in bed with a heating pad unable to move while life happens around me. i'm tired of hearing my children bicker because they're doing things that i should be doing and having to take on more responsibility than a 10, 8 and 6 year old should have to take on. i'm tired of my husband having to work all day, deal with me calling and crying because i'm in pain, and then come home and deal with 4 kids, getting dinner made, trying to straighten up the house and do laundry and take care of me. i'm tired of hearing myself whine.

phew.

i am surrounded by wonderful people. we have incredible family and friends willing to pitch in and help out. people who have brought us food, taken my googies to school and/or picked them up, taken away my dirty laundry and brought it back clean, vacuumed and mopped and dusted and picked up around the house. people who call and just ask how i am or what more they can do. people who offer to come scrub my toilets for cryin' out loud.
wonderful, amazing people.

but in the end, i can't shake the knowledge that i have 9+ more weeks of this to deal with, and so far there is no relief in sight. and that i am the momma. this is my home, these are my children.
i love being a mother. i love making them all clean, clipping nails and braiding hair. putting them in clean neat clothes and feeding them healthy foods that i made.
but right now i am an ornament.