Hip Check

Babies unable to turn over in the womb are forced by human geometry to spend their time in a pike-like "V" position, waiting to be born. This can have the unfortunate consequence of causing the hips to form incorrectly and affecting the ability and quality of walking. There are awkward but successful ways to address this malformation if discovered early (wearing leg braces for several months), and terrible ways if discovered late (surgically fracturing and reforming the hips). So, off we went to the sonographist (I made that word up, but doesn't it make sense? A sono-gram-er would be, what? A sonographist. Disappointingly, she considered herself a "radiology technician": how droll.) Anyway, they twisted her around like Stretch Armstrong while watching her joint move with ultrasound -- really quite amazing. She's amazingly flexible and wasn't the least put out by the mandatory yoga. You probably cannot see this in the image here, but she grinned her passive, blissful grin the whole time.

It was quite odd being at the ultrasound machine with Hannah, as she'd always been on the inside, and here she was in her car seat. The machine was our way to see her, and seeing her under the machine -- so quickly -- was surreal. It was as if we were there to see her baby in some rapidly spiralling life loop, accelerating out of control. Then I thought about whether, if she has a little brother or sister, whether Hannah would want see his/her image on the screen. Then I thought, one day she'll probably have to wheel us in to have our hips scanned. Our whole lives passed in front of my eyes. It was "Parental Vertigo." Fortunately about then she had a diaper incident and cleaning that up brought me rapidly back to the moment.

Afterwards they wouldn't tell us anything. Apparently a more senior sonogra... er, radiologist must examine the results, then pass them along to our pediatrician. All this takes a week. So by her appointment on Tuesday we were rather anxious and were quite relieved when assured by everyone that her hips check out. Finally we've put the last of the breech complications behind us. More importantly, Hannah won't have to deal with any of them. When she's busy with her new favorite hobby putting her toes in her mouth, we have no worries. Now her only challenges are, well, being related to us!