Our hip dysplasia journey- Hip Hip Hooray!

I can’t believe I’m writing this… but he has finally reached ‘normal‘ angles!! I never thought I’d add this to our hip dysplasia journey- hip hip hooray!

A month without the Pavlik harness

If you’ve been following our journey, you’ll know that four weeks ago the Pavlik Harness seemed to be starting to work it’s magic and his left hip took a huge jump to 58 degrees (60+ is classed as ‘normal’). His consultant decided to remove the harness, to see if he would regress, much to our horror.

Some soul searching and open discussions with other parents in the same boat led us to ignoring the initial medical advice and we kept the harness on for a few days before moving onto overnight wear and a few days of double nappies before going cold turkey for 2.5 weeks.

During those 2.5 weeks we used an Ergo Baby Carrier, limited car seat use and avoided tight clothing that would restrict his leg positioning. We really feared regression and did everything we could to avoid it.

The results are in…

Well, everything we did worked! His angles hitched up a notch and just enough to discharge him from care for the next 6 months. He’ll be 11 months old before we head back for his first X-Ray to see if he’s regressed at all. Hopefully he’ll be crawling and weight bearing at this point so we’ll truly have an insight into how things are looking.

If you’d like to skip forward to this point, you can here-Our hip dysplasia journey- One year on from the Pavlik harness – Flicks and Red Lips

It’s a result we hadn’t dared imagine and I could barely look at the screen during the scan. It all still feels a little like a ‘pinch me’ moment!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m obviously over the moon delighted- but naturally I’m also terrified. 6 months is over double his age, and a lot can happen in this time. So I’ll be sticking with the baby wearing, banning a jumperoo and his skinny jeans will have to wait a long while yet. Hopefully if we keep doing what we are doing, he won’t creep out of ‘normal’ anytime soon.

It takes a DDH village

Every cloud has a silver lining, and the positives of this rollercoaster has been ‘meeting’ others in the same situation, supporting one another from afar. It’s also been invaluable broadening our knowledge of DDH, given that I hadn’t given my own hip health much thought.

I hope this series of posts helps at least one person going through the same experiences, just as others blogs helped us tremendously. I’ve got one or two hip dysplasia posts coming up that I’m already working on, but those will be the last until the update in 6 months time.

So for now it’s time to say a MASSIVE thank you to each and every one of you for reading these posts, commenting and sending such wonderful messages of support. And especially to all our wonderful friends who never forgot an appointment and listened to my worries on a weekly basis. You will never know how much it has all meant to me. It’s true what they say… it certainly does take a village to raise a little one.

Now, it’s time to celebrate- hip hip hooray!!

Sian x

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