The Boot Update

So, remember when I posted about the boot/night garment that was going to change our lives?  Well we got it a few days after the holidays aaaannnnnnnnndddddddd...

Yeah, wop wop.  Didn't fit.  The front part was about an inch shorter than the back part.  Luckily, Solaris is a pretty great company and they just made us another one.  They even let us keep the not-so-great-fitting one to use in the meantime.  We got the second one last week aaaaaannnnnnnnnddddddd...

I have no photo!  I am terrible, I know, but since the boot goes on at bedtime, photos are not usually at the forefront of my mind, sorry. Here's another view of the old one.  If I get a good picture of the new one I will update.  But, it does fit, Huzzah!

See how the front and back aren't even? 

The new one once has a sparkly mermaid decal on it instead of the butterfly that was on the old one.  In a true example of men vs. women, Daniel wasn't so keen on the mermaid, but I liked it.  Then we took Juniper to PT last week and our therapist exclaimed how much cooler the mermaid was than the other one.  I guess it's a girl thing.

I will include random cuteness to make up for lack of new boot pics

It has been pretty life changing, because it really is so much easier to velcro the boot on her at night than it is to wrap her, especially because she wants to move pretty much all the time these days, which makes wrapping her a total PITA really difficult.  I was completely sold on the boot until 4am last night the other night.  Juniper has been teething, and last night the other night was particularly bad, but when I was lying there, not sleeping, as Juniper pinched my cheek, I realized that her sleep has been pretty bad since we started using the boot.  I'm really hoping it is just coincidence, and we get a good night of sleep in with the boot on soon, so I don't have to admit that maybe there is a connection.  I can't imagine that it is less comfortable, but maybe it is just a matter of getting used to something new.

Her Christmas wagon is finally assembled.

One of the benefits to using the tribute that Solaris talks about is that the swelling is improved because of the consistency of the garment.  For instance, when I wrap Juniper the foam layer doesn't end up in exactly the same place, the wrapping isn't always the same tension, it may end higher or lower on her leg, or different parts of her leg and foot end up with more or fewer layers; there's just a lot of variables.   Juniper's leg has always been the smallest when we are consistent with her wrapping and massage.  If she is sick, or goes to sleep before we can wrap her, or gets cellulitis and we don't wrap her for a few days, it usually takes a week for the swelling to kind of normalize again.  The idea with the tribute is that it takes the consistency to another level because not only are you wearing it every day, but the leg is getting the same level of compression, in the same places, every time.  Her ankle looks way better than I have ever gotten it to look with just wrapping, and the top of her foot is looking better too.

So there's the boot update.  Since I wrote this Juniper has had some better sleep in the boot, and some not great sleep with her leg wrapped, so I think it's a who really knows situation.  

She's Crafty

For starters, how did we go from this, which I have titled "Galloshes Socks:"

Juniper at about a week old

to this in two months? 

Juniper at two months old

That onesie in the top photo doesn't even fit anymore.  The galloshes socks are too tight on her lymphedema leg!

Anyway, It's the little, stupid things that keep getting me with this whole lymphedema thing.  Like, how am I supposed to keep her little feet warm when she can't wear any baby socks?*  I guess she could, in theory, wear socks, but since she can't have anything tight on her affected leg, that makes wearing socks that might actually have hope of staying on her feet kind of difficult.  It's also summer and the sock thing is not super important all the time right now, but when Daniel and I go on walks and her feet are dangling out in the carrier, I want something on her feet to protect her from the sun and from bugs.  I'm pretty much terrified about her getting a bug bite on her bad leg (I need to figure out some other way to word that since it's not like I'm sending her left leg to detention) since that could make her leg swell even more or cause infection.

I tried putting some cute fleece booties on her that we got as a gift, but they're way big and there is something wrong about wearing fleece booties in July on a sunny walk.  Thus I was forced to actually use some of my insane fabric stash (I have a problem with collecting designer fabric) to make some cuteness.  Two birds, one stone I tell you.

Notice that the cutie booties are not made from any of this recently purchased fabric.  Hmph.

I ordered two sewing for baby books when I was pregnant, and the only thing I'd thus far made from them was a nursing shirt for me; whoops.  It was time.  I decided to make the cutie booties from Amy Butler's Little Stitches for Little Ones.  I picked these instead of the booties in Anna Maria Horner's Handmade Beginnings because the cutie booties have no elastic, and because my friend had some for her son and they seemed to work well.  I've since read about using a seam ripper to take the elastic threads out of the cuff of socks so that they don't press in on the lymphedema calf/ankle, and I do plan on doing that to Juniper's socks in the future.  However, if I'd read about that trick a few days earlier the world would be lacking the following cuteness, and that would be sad indeed.  

Let me just say that while I've been sewing clothes since high school, these booties kind of intimidated me.  They're small, and full of curved pieces, and, well, I wanted them to be of better, more finished, quality than the stuff I throw together for myself.  Friends, sewing baby stuff is awesome.  It's tiny, so it is fast.  Cutting the pieces and ironing everything took longer than the sewing.  I want to make like ten pairs.  Remarkably, they actually stay on Juniper's feet, and since they adjust, they fit on chicken foot and puffy foot equally well.

I apologize for the blurriness of this photo, Juniper likes her booties so much that she insisted on bouncing non-stop

I think Juniper likes them, but she also seems to like eating the exact same thing every two hours every.single.day, so perhaps she is not the best judge.  But, I like them and think they are pretty freaking cute.  

Fabric is Dan Stiles for Birch Organics on the outside, Riley Blake Alphabet Soup on the inside.

*You have to be careful not to put anything on the affected leg that  makes an indentation and therefore tourniquet effect.  That would keep the lymph fluid down in the leg and possibly cause worse swelling.