first pedi appt = hip dysplasia

By pedi I mean pediatrician of coure, not Sophie's first mani/pedi:) For the most part, she got a clean bill of health. Interestingly, her height was changed from 20.5 inches to 19.5 inches. The nurse explained that at birth, the height is really just a good guess since they do it so quickly. So 6 days later and it seems like she shrunk an inch.

Weight was down 8.5% from birth weight. When we left the hospital she was down 7%. The doctor asked us to come back for a weight check on Friday. When we did, Sophie had gained 5 oz. Dr thought it was a fluke actually, since she only expected her to gain 2 oz over the two days. So that dilemma was solved.

The bad news is that in Dr. R's initial exam, she felt something "not quite right" in her hip area. She ordered an u/s to check it out. I think Dan and I both left the appt in a sense of denial that something might be wrong. We were just calling it preventative, probably to ease our minds. So Thursday we went to Children's Hospital to get the u/s done. The hospital is just so sad. I have a few friends who spent months there with their preemie babies, and I just don't know how they did it day in and day out. It was hard enough for me to say "We're looking for radiology" without breaking down. We did the u/s and then when we went back for her weight check appt were told by Dr. R that yes, it looked like there was some dysplasia in both hips. Next step was an appt with the Orthopedist at Children's, which we had yesterday.

The second the ortho walked into the office I started sobbing, like yucky, ugly cries. It was just so hard for me to fathom that my perfect little girl was at a specialist office at 9 days old. The good news in the whole thing is that the Dr was actually shocked that Dr. R had picked up the issue. She said the dysplasia is so slight that most pedi's wouldn't have caught it. That made Dan and I both feel better.

The solution (hopefully) is that she is wearing a harness to try to fix the problem. She'll wear it for 3 weeks, 20 hours per day, and then we'll go back for another u/s. Ortho thinks that the problem may fix itself in that short period of time. Once it's fixed, whether in 3 weeks or whenever, she'll then continue to wear the harness for naps/night time sleeping for about 3 months. When the guy came in the office with the harness, I lost it again. (I had managed to calm myself down while ortho explained details). But once I saw it, well...the waterworks started again.

It's easy to use and doesn't seem to hurt her. And I know it's better to catch something like this at 9 days and not 9 months. Ortho reiterated that it shouldn't affect her developmental goals at all. Crawling and walking should occur right on schedule.

So, 11 days old and she's already had 4 dr appts.