Any Gear Help & Advice for Infant w Hip Dysplasia?
We are struggling to help our 14-month old with hip dysplasia wear her Rhino brace for the recommended 20 hours a day. We've done this before - she was diagnosed at two months and we did a sling then Rhino brace for seven-ish months before things looked good enough to ditch it. She was less mobile so it was a little easier having her stay put. Now, back in the brace after a very sad check-in, she's miserable. So I'm hoping this reaches someone who's been through this before to get some guidance on a few things we've been running into.
Any car seat recommendations that are not $700? We were gifted a Nuna Pipa (a dream seat, so light!), however it does not fit her in the brace.
Any advice on helping her get more comfortable crawling around? Watching her commando crawl while crying is...not my jam.
Any general thoughts/feelings/guidance on navigating this part? We have a different orthopedic doctor than we originally had because we moved back home to the Bay from Nashville. There we felt supported and encouraged that things were going to work out no matter what the route -- here, he was much more like "it'll take a miracle" to avoid surgery and...well, that's a bummer.
Parent Replies
So sorry you are going through this. A friend of mine went through this with her daughter about 2 years ago when she was, I believe, around the same age as your little one. Her daughter had to have the surgery and was in a full body cast for a long time. She's really active on Instagram - let me know if you want to reach out to her for advice, support, or resources. She's in Massachusetts so wouldn't have Bay Area specialist recommendations, unfortunately.
I'm so sorry. My daughter wore a rhino cruiser from a very early age and was in it for about 15 months. It fixed the left hip but not the right and she ended up with PAO surgery at 13. The angle on her right hip never got better than about 19 degrees. Surgery isn't the end of the world (like I really thought it would be), and in fact it has been miraculous. No pain in that hip and she's 5 years post surgery. That said, she didn't really protest the rhino when she was young. She didn't know any different. We kept her in it pretty much all the time, but she never had the opportunity to ditch it and then go back into it. She learned to crawl and even walk in it. I think we just had a regular ol' Graco car seat for her and it was fine. I did find a DDH facebook group that was pretty helpful. There are some worst case scenarios on there, but they do have a lot of helpful people going through what you're going through. Hang in there. It is fixable and it will be ok.