Mama says my magic shoes are gonna take me everywhere.
The braces have come in, and after a few days of adjustment Atti now wears them whenever he’s awake. I have to admit, I really wasn’t looking forward to this. He’s so scrawny that a lot of the time I can tell myself that he’s still just a baby and his lack of mobility doesn’t seem so scary. But having to wear an apparatus full time pops that delusional little bubble and good.
They look a lot more comfortable than what poor Forrest had to wear. Light weight plastic, padding on all the pressure points, and I even got to choose a snazzy rock band design on the velcro. His therapist said that all the money we’ve put into the space program was worth it just to have the plastic that made these braces instead of the metal and leather contraptions they had to use when she started working.
I can’t even imagine being a parent dealing with those. All the adaptive equipment is a blessing, don’t mistake me, and whatever mobility Atti captures through it’s use will be worth any amount of sacrifice. But it is also a barrier. It is harder to hug your child when they are velcroed into a large piece of equipment. It is not as easy to snuggle when there are plastic bricks at the end of their legs. It’s bittersweet. Like so much of raising children is, I suppose.
Atti does not seem to mind them. He did a little squawking about them at the very beginning, but then a miracle happened. We put on his new braces, along with some leg splints to help him keep his legs straight, and stood him up next to a table. He stood up, pushed away from the table, and stood up completely independently. There in the middle of the room with no hands on him, he stood up all by himself. Legs akimbo and chest thrust out like an explorer on a mountain top. And I guess, in many ways, that’s exactly what he is.