Three Month Old Babies

I was just thinking about how Anna is now three months old and how she is starting to fade out of the newborn babyness and into the infant babyness and learning that she can do some pretty cool things...she has started to give out smiles that I can actually count on rather than just hope for, she can find her little fists and thumbs regularly to suck on them, she has started paying attention to toys around her more, she arches her back so much that she is this close to rolling over, she coos and goos and shows her love to her daddy and brothers and sister and me, and just all of these amazing, new little things that seem to be coming everyday.  It's so fun to be her mommy and I am so excited to watch her grow and interact, but at the same time, she is very, very probably our last baby and I just want to squeeze her and love her and slow time down.  It's times like this when I think about how I will never have a baby this little again doing the little newborn things, the little grunts and the smiles in her sleep, and it makes me want to out-procreate the Duggars. 

While she does smile a lot, she gets camera shy so I don't get many smiles on camera.  She gave me this one though.

Thinking about Anna being three months old aleady got me to thinking about when Leah was three months old.  I found the following that I wrote in December of 2008 about what Leah went through with her hips back then...

After a stressful pregnancy where ultrasounds found both Leah's kidney and brain to have too much fluid in them (a bad sign), where tests ruled out any findable problems, and both issues cleared up at the last ultrasound taken at 36 weeks pregnant, Leah Nichole Rill was born on May 20th, 2008.

That day, the pediatrician found her hips to be dislocatable, or 'loose' in their sockets. The next day we were discharged from the hospital and drove straight to Boys Town Hospital to see an orthopaedic pediatrician who said Leah needed a Pavlik Harness. After the initial crying over something being 'wrong' with my baby, I thought I was holding up pretty well until I actually saw the harness on her for the first time.  That was hard and I felt terrible for crying because of how she looked.

For three months we saw the orthopaedic doctor every two weeks. On July 23rd (two months old), Leah had to go under anesthesia and have an orthrogram and a closed reduction done. This is where they inject dye into her hips and then do a type of ultrasound to see where all the tissue and muscle is around her bones and to put Leah's hips into her sockets correctly without surgery. It showed improvement so she continued to be in the Pavlik Harness.  We had to stay overnight there because of her age.

We moved to Texas in early September and saw a new orthopaedic doctor at Wilford Hall at Lackland Air Force Base. We went in for an appointment right away and I was 100% expecting to hear that she was ready to be done with the harness since it works for babies 80% of the time.  The doctor did an ultrasound on her hips and determined that her hips were now both out of socket and she needed surgery in five days to correct the problem and she'd have to wear a Spica cast for three months and then a brace on her hips for another three months.

That was a huge shock to me and since she needed the surgery so soon, we (all four children and I) had to stay at the hospital for the rest of the day to get all of the pre-op paperwork done, all the while I was crying and devastated and trying to be strong at the same time.  Let me tell you that it took HOURS to sign about five papers at our military hospital, aka socialized healthcare.  Compared to less than five minutes at the private hospital up in Nebraska.  It was very frustrating, which made the day we spent there to sign about five pieces of paper even worse.

On September 7th, when Leah was 3 1/2 months old, we went to the hospital bright and early (actually it was still dark) and Leah went into surgery at about 7AM. Dr. Ritchie made incisions in both creases of her thighs along the 'bikini line' in front and scraped away all the tissue that had built up in her hip socket. Then he placed the hip bones back in place. I was able to go see her at noon and she woke up at about 1PM. She slept most of the day and had an MRI at 1AM (yes, one o'clock in the morning is when they could fit us in) that night which showed that her hips stayed where the doctor put them. She had to stay over night because of her age. It was a very long night with the monitors on her going off for minor reasons.  Such as her oxygen monitor getting loose or her heart rate going up everytime she woke up to eat when I couldn't easily get up to push the quiet button and I eventually got in trouble with the nurse for turning the darn thing off but seriously, I was tired and it's not like it was important enough for anyone to run in to see what was going on. We also had a terrible time when her IV came out and two high school looking residents or something tried to put it back into her arm.  A three months old arm.  I finally asked them to either not put it back in or to get someone else to do it.  Their superior decided it wasn't needed anymore.  We finally got to go home the next day at noon after three HOURS of finding a car seat bed she'd fit in.  Not a smooth experience.

This is when I walked in to see her.  I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but this was not it and the tears came streaming down again.  Leah was very swollen from her IV fluids and the cast was just huge and I just wondered how in the world I would take care of her.  Once I got over the initial shock of what the cast looked like, I calmed down and knew we would be okay.  I love when God does that for me.

Besides, the cast had some positives...what three month old baby can stand up on her own?

And her biggest brother could still hold her.

And all of her brothers give her plenty of love.

She stayed in this white cast for seven weeks and then went back under anesthesia to change casts so she had room to grow. She was old enough this time and didn't have to stay overnight so we were home by about 3PM. Her new cast was pink and was much more conveinant. She was more bent and could fit into her baby gear better. She even fit into her infant car seat which made things so much easier with three other kids to keep up with in public since I could set her down in her infant car seat. She seemed a lot more comfortable in it also, although she still woke up 4-5 times a night. And she didn't get thrush at all in the pink cast and she got it twice in the white cast, which was very uncomfortable for her.

You can see here how the diaper fit up inside of her cast.  I just sort of shoved it up there.

I was thrilled that she fit in her carseat/carrier again.

This is how she slept...in a bassinet, propped up on pillows.  She woke up several times a night because it just wasn't very comfortable.

While I did not do this often, her cast sure was strong!

Leah ended up getting her pink cast off on December 3rd, at six months old. The boys and Chris were able to come watch the cast come off, which was neat for them. The machine that worked the saw was loud (like a vacuum cleaner) and Leah screamed the whole time. The inside of the cast was disgusting with #2 all over it on the inside and her legs had small rashes on them from irritation. It looked terrible and I felt like I did a bad job keeping it clean, but really, it's not ideal for diapers.  Her legs were also brown from layers of dry skin.

It was so dirty inside the cast.  It was sort of embarrassing but I was assured that it wasn't as bad as a lot of babies' casts.

This picture does not do justice to show the difference in Leah's thighs, which are white and plump where they were exposed from the diaper hole of the cast, and the rest of her legs, which are brownish and super skinny with very little fat or muscle.  She was very top heavy.

This is the extra space in her car seat without her cast on.

The doctor did an x-ray and pushed on her hips (which made her scream again). He said that her hips looked GREAT and that she DID NOT need the brace that he thought she would at all! That news was just so wonderful to hear. God is great and faithful and healed her hips. The doctor wants to do x-rays in three months and then periodically after that to make sure her hips stay put.

Now Leah has been out of her cast for four days. At first her legs were pretty stiff and she didn't really want to move them and would cry when I moved them or touched them too hard. We gave her Motrin for two days and then she started to move her legs more and get more comfortable it seemed. And they are the skinniest baby legs you've ever seen!  After three days she rolled over from tummy to back. She can't sit up at all, not even really with support and she can't support much of her weight on her legs either. She does okay for small amounts of time with playing on her tummy and her back, something she couldn't do with her cast on. She even slept better last night, only waking twice! She does seem pretty insecure though and cries whenever anyone (besides immediate family) talks to her. She probably isn't too sure about what happened. But it's not like she was really social before her cast came off anyways.

It is so wonderful to hold Leah and cuddle with her without her cast on. I really feel like we missed out on that for the past three months. Each time I get her up from her nap, I feel so thankful that God has healed her and her cast is off.

...back to present day...

Since hip dysplasia runs in families, I am so thankful that Anna's hips are perfect.  In fact, whenever she has a well baby visit, I specifically ask the doctor if her hips feel at all loose in their sockets, even though they check all babies at those visits and would certainly let me know if there was a problem. 

Leah is still not in the clear with her hip problems and I realize that she could be facing another more invasive surgery in about a year, which I dread when I actually think about it, but I do have a peace about it and completely believe that saying, "If God brings me to it, he will bring me through it."  For now I'm just enjoying her 22 month old toddlerness and all of the fun that goes along with that.

And as I sit her next to my sweet sleeping newborn/infant, I think how beautful and perfect she is.  And I think of my four other children upstairs sleeping, beautiful and perfect, hip problems and all.