one in, one out

A couple weeks ago I took Annabelle back to the Orthopedic Dr.  She had an x-ray (she's old enough now - no more ultrasounds!), and we got some reassuring news.  Her left hip is still in place, and looks good - Dr Olney is confident it will continue to stay in place, so she is now allowed 6-8 hrs a day out of her brace, and has no restrictions when out of her brace (except no Johnny Jump-ups).  I promptly put our Jumperoo together that night.  She's still more a fan of the Exersaucer than the Jumperoo, and I feel better about the Exersaucer because she can still wear the brace in it.  I still kinda baby that hip.

Her right hip is still dislocated, which we know and expect.  She'll have her open reduction in October that should fix it.

In the meantime, we're working on weaning her out of her brace, slowly.  She is also now doing physical therapy for her torticollis.  She's still pretty limited on her range of motion, and she detests the stretches we have to do for her.  I'm praying it gets easier as her muscles stretch out.  We have several sets of stretches we have to do 5-6x a day, for at least 5 reps.  So, all-in-all, each stretch 25-30 times a day.  It's a lot, but not that time consuming.  It's just painful to watch her screaming, but to know it's what she needs.  I hate seeing my baby uncomfortable.

Otherwise, all is well!

Torticollis

I first noticed something was different about a month ago. I noticed that it was easier to feed Annabelle on my left side, she seemed more comfortable, and was able to turn her head all the way to her right side to eat. She could basically eat lying flat on her back with her head turned. (there's actually a pic of her doing it on my breastfeeding with the PH post). On my right side, I had to modify how I held her because she wouldn't turn her head. At first, I thought it was related to the PH/RC, but it's more of a neck issue.

I didn't think much of it until I was reading up on hip dysplasia, and it said that infants with hip dysplasia can have neck problems - in fact, that's how some DDH cases are diagnosed. 'Torticollis" was the term I saw, and after looking it up, it seemed as though it fit Annabelle pretty well. I looked back through her pics from the last month, and in most of them, her head is tilted to the same side. It's the same side she favors, and cries in pain if I try to turn her head the other way.

We don't have her next well visit scheduled, but I'm going to ask Dr Olney (our orthopedic Dr) on Thursday when we return for an ultrasound.

Follow up: Dr Olney did say she has mild torticollis, but that it should resolve as she gets older. We can do stretches to encourage her to turn her head to the left.