The first stage

The first stage of the Ponseti method consists of plaster casts from groin to toes. It starts when the baby is a few days old. The feet are slowly manipulated into the correct position. Every week the old casts are removed, the feet are manipulated a little more, and recasted.
Ian's got his first casts when he was 4 days old. I cried like a baby. LOL I'd spent a few days holding him in his favorite position, a curled up ball. But now he had these heavy, clunky, cold damp casts to deal with. I didn't know how to hold him, carry him, or nurse him because I was afraid of hurting him further, but after a few days, we figured it out. In addition, we had to figure out how to protect the casts from diaper blowouts and how to minimize the top edges of the casts from cutting into his skin. We solved those problems mostly by tucking a circle of cotton around the edges and cutting off the tops of a childs pair of socks and tucking it around the edges too.