The final result

The baby is harness free.

Very exciting (although the husband is still a little wary).

I called the orthopedic surgeon at around 10.30 and was told they didn't have her scans just yet but they could see us for an appointment on 15 March. I think my level of distress was pretty clear over the phone when I explained she was 7.5 months old and had already been in the harness for more than 3 months and I didn't know what I should do with her - they got us an appointment at 3.30 that day.

The surgeon was great - he sat us down and ran through all of our results, clearly explaining for the initial ultrasound, our midway ultrasound and this x-ray what we were looking for, how they got each result and what it meant exactly. He drew the angles on to the results and it was the first time it really seemed to make sense for us.

He explained how the second ultrasound was showing a good improvement from the first (something that the pediatrician didn't explain, when he first told us it looked worse and then oh no, it was actually better), so it responded well to the treatment.

In a nutshell, the ultrasound is able to see the baby's 'bones' (they are all cartlidegy) and the x-ray can see only the bone that has formed from cartlidge (so we can't really compare the two). He explained how there hasn't been a lot of consistent research in to how best treat hip dysplasia - all the doctors seem to do their own thing and then look back retrospectively at what worked - I think this is basically all because you can't really tell what's going on in there. There is not much research in to it, and it's quite vague - there's no actual proof that doing more than the pavlic harness makes any difference (it could well sort itself out).

He explained how the nurses can find more cases than there 'actually' are when the look at the leg folds - it could well be fine by the time baby is two years old, even if she hadn't had the harness.

The plan is that she will have an x-ray at 12 months to see how she is tracking. If it is not looking great (as in the angles in her hips are not closer to what they want) then there will be another x-ray at 18 months. If that one is still not great, they will look in to bracing her at night for 6 months and rescan at 2 years of age. There is no proof that this night bracing works, but then at least we will have tried something before we are left with our last option - surgery. They would cut in to her pelvis and change the angle of it, as her problem is not to do with a dislocating hip, but rather how much of her leg her pelvis is able to capture.

There is nothing we can do between now and then.

I don't think I realised how much the harness was weighing on my mind for all this time, until it was off. I just instantly felt better for it.

I hope that this is the end of it all, but we just have to remember the last thing the doctor said to us - this is only a very mild case.