Ruby's surgery is finally behind us!

As many of you know, Ruby was born with developmental hip dysplasia--basically, she had no hip sockets. Apparently if you are the first born girl and are born breech, your chances of having this are over 60%. Strange, then, that Dave and I never heard a word of it until the day after Ruby was born when her pediatrican (who we love, love, LOVE!) diagnosed it.

After two months in a harness (which was has a 90% success rate) and another month in a splint (which looks like it was built by seventh graders), we learned last December that Ruby would need to have surgery on her left leg to correct the problem. (The right leg was much more accomodating and started to correct itself by her third month.) The original surgery was scheduled for March, but had to be postponed because Ruby came down with a not-too-serious,-but-serious-enough-to-keep-us-out-of-surgery case of RSV. So, you can see why I say she "FINALLY" had her surgery!

Her surgeon had to make a small incision in order to clip a tendon that was keeping the leg from moving into the necessary position. Once that was done, they quickly cast her in place in hopes of the hip correctly growing around the leg. the whole thing took an hour and a half and was much less invasive than we had feared it would need to be.

And Ruby was a trooper! Don't get me wrong, when she woke up she was M-A-D--we assume because she couldn't move. Do you blame her? But by the end of the day, she had resigned herself to the cast and was back to her playful self. I'm glad to see she doesn't carry her mom's gene for holding grudges. (Dave just told me that that if he were writing this post he would point out that she is easy going like he is. But as it is, he is not writing it, is he?)