harness

What is Subluxating Hips/Acetabular Dysplasia?

Hip Dysplasia is a comprehensive term that has been used to include a spectrum of related developmental hip problems in infants and children, often present at birth. Your doctor may have used one of the following diagnoses for your child instead:

Congenital hip dislocation - where the hip is frankly dislocated at birth
Congenital dislocatable hip - where the hip is in place at birth, but dislocates fully when stressed
Congenital subluxatable hip - where the hip is in place, but dislocates partially when stressed
Acetabular dysplasia - where the hip socket is shallow and remains shallow, so that the hip is unstable
Developmental dysplasia (or dislocation) of the hip - a more recent term, to reflect thefact that there are cases that have apparently normal hips at birth, but develop the problem in the first year of life

Read in more detail at this site. This is where I quoted the above information from.

And yes, Annalyn is 'suffering' from it. She is not truly suffering, as it does not hurt her and since she doesn't walk yet, it is not affecting her walking. She is wearing the harness (Rhino kicker) to correct it. She will have to wear it at least 23 hours a day for 8 weeks, and then approximately 12 hours a day for 8 weeks. The harness has a high success rate and the doctor is very hopeful. There is a very, very slim chance that the harness will not work. If that happens, then she will have to have surgery and be in a body cast. Usually that only happens if the parents do not have the child wear the harness or do not have it on them correctly. She was fussy about it for the first couple of days,but has adjusted pretty well to the harness. It didn't help that she had a stomach thing that was making her sick at the same time. She is doing much better now. Now, if only I could get used to changing her diaper with that darn harness on her. :) The only problem that we have actually run in to is her clothes. Because of the harness, she cannot wear anything less then 3-6 months, as 0-3 months are too small. She also can not wear anything that zips or buttons down one leg. The article of clothing must button down both legs. The reason for this last? Apparently, the ones that zip or button down one leg only tend to be narrower in thehips and would not work with the harness. So, Rob and I have had to do some shopping for a few more outfits. We did get her some cute ones though. :)

Here are a couple of pictures of Annalyn with the harness. It is cloth and the straps are velcro.

Harness

As you can see, they gave her a pink one.

Harness

A close up of her in the harness.

She is still adorable.

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