Our Newest Adventure

 Back in September we took Preston to his pediatrician and she was examining him and started to check his hips by bending his knees and pushing down on them to see if his hip joints were okay. Well, when she did this his hip joints were "clicking". She told us this and I didn't know what it meant, so she explained that something could be wrong with his hip joints. The pediatrician asked us to take him to get an ultrasound of his hips and then also to see an orthopedist. October came and we went to the orthopedist and she did another ultrasound on his hips and found out that he had minor hip dysplasia. 

She explained to us that with the hip joint we had a ball and a cup. The ball is suppose to be at least 50% sitting in the cup of the joint. His left hip joint was 56%, which was good, but his right hip joint was 39 or 43%, not good enough. We had some options, because it was so minor we could just not do anything and hope that it would grow into the joint more, because as a baby his bones are still a bit soft. So we could 1- do nothing, and hope it grows back into the joint, if that didn't work then he could have arthritis in his hip by the age of 30, or if it got worse he would have to have surgery at the age of two and break bones to fix it. or 2- we could put him in a Pavlik harness, and it should be taken care of within 6 weeks. 

We decided to go with the harness. As soon as the pediatrician told us what this "clicking" could mean I started researching and saw the Pavlik harness in my research. I understood what it would mean and we decided that we really didn't want to gamble that it would get better on it's own nor did we want him to have surgery in a few years. So we got the harness!! Which was interesting.

Here is Preston at home after getting the harness on. Made the clothes on him look weird.  

This is what the harness looks like. We had to keep it on for 23.5 hours a day, so only enough time to take it off to give him a bath. Which he looked forward to everyday. 

The best thing is that the harness did not bother him too much, and since he is so young he won't remember it. 

It was a little weird to hold him, because he always had his legs spread. 

 He was only 2 months old when he got the harness on, and we had been swaddling him to sleep at night. Well....we couldn't do that anymore, because we had to keep his knees apart. But it seems that it didn't disrupt sleep too much either.

Clothing on the other hand was not easy. Finally I just decided to put his sleepers on half-way. I didn't want to stretch the clothing and also didn't want to constrict his legs or have them come together. 

 The harness did make him quite flexible though. He learned how to kick with the harness on, even though it was out to the side and looked really awkward. 

 Soon he just got used to it and not much changed. Preston even kept trying to turn over with it on!

 We went back three weeks after getting the harness to check how things were, and he was back to normal!!! YAY!! But the minimum amount of time to have the harness on is six weeks. So we had to keep it on for three more weeks. Finally at the beginning of December he was able to get it off!!!! He smiled the entire day, it was so cute!

 He also FINALLY was able to get back into his swing and sleep all snugly with his bear.