Orthopedic Clinic Visit

Just an update about Claire's appointment at the Orthopedic Clinic at Children's, which was on Friday afternoon. As we all suspected, she is completely, 100 percent normal.

Because of Claire's breech grand entrance, the nurse practitioner seemed more worried about her hips than about her being bow-legged, despite of my doctor's assurances that Claire's hips are fine. So the nurse sent us for some x-rays, a process that Claire did not enjoy in the least—they actually had to use masking tape to tape my poor screaming child to a cold, hard table in order to get them! Then, the x-ray technicians thought they could get both Claire's legs and her hips in the same shot because she is so small. But that turned out not to be the case, so we had to go back to the x-ray room a second time to get one last shot. I don't think anybody—not Claire, not me, and not the technicians—were too thrilled about that.

But the end result was that we got to see for ourselves that there is absolutely nothing wrong either with her legs or her hips. Her tibia bones looked perfectly straight on the x-rays to me, and the nurse showed us how her hips are definitely in the sockets. I pointed out that when you try to actually force Claire's knees or feet together, she resists and they just won't go. The nurse's explanation for that is that "there's a lot of soft tissue there." I said, "So, she's too fat to put her legs together? That's what you're telling me?" : ) Of course, I don't remember this being a problem with Elsa, and she was clearly just as fat, but since there appears to be no underlying physical problem, we're assuming Claire will grow out of this one way or the other.

So we are all good and will not be going back to the orthopedic clinic any time soon (knock on wood).