My son was born with a birth defect.
I remember the day we went for our anatomy scan, anxious to see our little guy more in-depth. His face. Fingers and toes.
We sat there, chatting it up with the ultrasound tech. How cute his little nose was. His fingers and the thumb he kept putting in his mouth.
Until things got really quiet.
I tried to look at the screen and decipher what I was seeing, but as she made me roll back and forth, side to side, and our light-hearted banter grew bleak. My heart sank.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she patted my leg.
My ever-optimistic husband told me nothing was wrong, but I knew.
The doctor came in and I tried to pay attention as best I could.
Clubfoot.
A small heart.
Oversized belly.
We were referred to Boston Children’s for an MRI—a heart scan and a slew of other testing.
My happy pregnancy became worrisome.
That night my husband and I did so much research on clubfoot. Googled each thing the doctor had said and scrolled through endless diagnoses.
We prepared for the worst as we broached the day of the baby and me being poked and prodded. I stared at ultrasound screens, laid in an MRI machine for hours of worrying, laughing at my husband’s ill attempts at jokes to ease my worries. His optimism was there for me, but I could sense in his voice, in each question he asked, the worry for our unborn baby.
After a full day of testing: the diagnosis came.
A clean bill of a health. He was small but mighty. He indeed did have clubfoot, but that within itself was manageable and correctable when he was born.
Our son would lead a normal life.
I remember the day he was born, hearing his cries, and not caring about anything else. He was here, healthy and in my arms. I played with his cute little feet and held him close. My precious boy.
The road wasn’t easy. There were weekly cast changes that started at two weeks old that slowly corrected his curved-in feet.
Surgery that we weren’t allowed to go back for. I worried about him being in pain, me not being able to hold him. Comfort him. Be there for him.
Then there was a bar that helped keep the correction to his feet in place.
And tears. So many tears from all of us as we paced the floors at night as he cried, trying to free himself from the casts, then bars.
Tears when we went to the doctors because he knew what was going to happen.
But now, at almost two, other than two little scars where he had the surgery, you’d never know he was born with bilateral club foot.
He runs, jumps, twirls around, just like any two-year-old boy.
Every day he stands and runs to give me a hug; sometimes I flash back to the struggles, the worry, and heartache I felt as I carried him, hoping he’d be all right. And I realize he’s more than all right.
Grayson Ty is a superhero. A boy put on this earth to do amazing things.
He was born with magic feet. And I can’t wait to see all he accomplishes in this world.
