I had just given birth to a beautiful baby boy. The doctor did the APGAR tests and he got 10’s both times. I was beaming! Praise God, a healthy baby boy! As I held him for the first time, I looked over every square inch of his body.
“Look, his toes are stuck together,” I told the delivery nurse.
She looked. “Yes, he has webbed toes.”
It didn’t really register with me, so I asked, “Can you pull them apart?”
“No,” she said, “they don’t come apart.”
I shrugged it off as I continued to look at him. I loved him at first sight. He had blue eyes and no hair. He had ten fingers and eight toes. It didn’t bother me.
I called everyone to tell that the baby had finally been born. (I was two weeks overdue.) Each conversation was the same:
Boy or girl? Boy.
Healthy? Yes.
Ten fingers, ten toes? Close enough, we’ll keep him!
No one else thought it was a big deal either.
About Webbed Toes:
Webbed toes are hereditary and can vary in degrees of severity. My son has two toes on each foot that are webbed. They are the two next to the big toe, and are connected up to the point where his toenails start. It turns out that my toes are also slightly webbed (the middle three on each foot). Mine are barely noticeable. I always thought I just had ugly feet.
His condition is considered to be a cosmetic deformity because it does not effect the functioning of his feet. (The feet are used as ‘platforms’ when walking. The big toe helps provide balance, and the others work together as part of the ‘platform’.) Despite learning that from my Ob-Gyn, we were referred to a “Special Hospital” (I can’t remember the name of it- it was a long time ago and we moved shortly after he was born) for a second opinion.
A Second Opinion
I took my little three-week old baby to the “Special Hospital”. We sat in the waiting room, which was filled with severely physically and mentally handicapped children and adults. When it was our turn, we were called into an examining room. I was asked if it was OK if students could observe the exam. I said, “Sure,” so now there were eight people (in white lab coats) in the exam room. The students looked apprehensive. Perhaps they had never seen a newborn at this particular hospital.
They all looked at my son’s toes. The doctor explained to the students that this was only cosmetic. (Whew! what a sigh of relief I blew!) He explained to me that I could have the toes surgically separated when my son reached the age of five or six. They would do one foot then the other, as Nick would have to stay off of the foot while recovering. It would be about a 14 week process.
I left feeling great. The second opinion was that it was only cosmetic, which, to me, meant that there was really nothing wrong. Besides, who sees your toes?
Growing Up With Webbed Toes
When Nick was a toddler I used to play “This Little Piggy” with him. I would wiggle his big toe and say, “This little piggy went to the market.” I would wiggle his webbed toes and say, “The twins stayed home.
He wasn’t aware that he was “different” until he started kindergarten. For some reason, one day at school, they all showed each other their toes. Naturally, he came home with a ton of questions. So we discussed it, and I told him my version of why he had webbed toes:
When I was pregnant with Nick (my first, and turns out only, natural-born child) I had a recurring dream. I would dream that I had given birth and was left standing alone in a room filled with rows and rows of babies in bassinets. I knew that I was there to get my baby, but I couldn’t tell which one was mine. I would wake up feeling scared and ashamed. How could I not know my own baby? What kind of mother would I be?
When, in real-life, my son was born with webbed toes I couldn’t help but think, “This is God’s way of letting me be able to know which baby is mine.” I told Nick that God made him special so that I could always find him. He likes that.
Living With Being “Special”
When he was six we discussed whether or not he’d like to have his toes “fixed”. Of course, his first reaction was, “How will you know it’s me?”. I explained that I could tell now. By this time in his life he had become rather proud of his toes. As a matter of fact, when meeting new people he would often ask, “Do you want to see my toes?” Needless to say, he never had the surgery.
Ironically, he grew up to be quite a good swimmer. When people comment on how fast he swims, he always says, “That’s because God gave me webbed toes!”
