baybeasts

It’s a bit overdue this post. But anyway. On Christmas Eve we took Huey for a routine 6 week scan to check his hips - routine because his brother has CDH (congenital dysplasia of the hip). The internet says that the chances of siblings both having CDH is 6 per cent - doesn’t seem like much of a chance, hey. But sure enough, the ultrasound tech went quiet in that way that they do when they see something wrong. It’s mild to moderate in the left hip, just like Loey - the image on the ultrasound screen was exactly the same. And like Loey, the initial treatment is to wait six weeks and see if it resolves by itself. Because Loey’s didn’t, we are expecting that he will be in a brace by early February - but we’ve still got him in the biggest damn nappies you’ve ever seen to mimic the position a brace would put his legs in!

Both boys have a pretty minor case of CDH compared to what some kids have to contend with, but it’s still hard to watch Loey in the brace at a time when movement is everything to him - he is even rolling and trying to crawl in his sleep! And it will be hard to put Huey in one too (though, given he is a bit more chilled out than Loey generally, we’re hopeful he’ll cope a bit better). We are so glad that it was picked up, because it wouldn’t have been if it wasn’t for Loey. Huey’s hips don’t click, and his thigh creases are only a tiny bit uneven, he’s a boy, and he wasn’t breech - in other words, apart from the sibling with CDH, he doesn’t have any of the external risk factors you would expect to see in a CDH case.

Huey is pretty bloody gorgeous - eight weeks old exactly today. He is just so smiley, and even laughs. He loves to have whole conversations with us, noisy, laughing, smiling conversations. We’ve been trying to get it on camera but he doesn’t perform - he never has, right from the first ultrasound when he kept his head turned away and his feet across his bits! He still sleeps a good 5 hour stretch overnight, which is a blessing, but seems to be mostly doing 40 minute catnaps during the day (we won’t worry about that though unless the night sleep deteriorates). He loves to play with toys - smiling and laughing at them too, and batting at them with his hands. He also does this very strange thing where he reaches up with his hand, grabs his own hair, hard, and yells. Poor boy - he doesn’t realise that he is inflicting pain upon himself. I imagine it goes something like this in his head - “ooh, cool thing to grab with my hand…hey! whose pulling my hair! cut it out!” But the cutest thing is when he looks intently into my eyes as he is feeding, raises one eyebrow, gets a little squint around his eyes, and then breaks into a full grin around my nipple, tongue still nicely stuck out underneath and still sucking. It’s heartmeltingly adorable.

He stops people in their tracks when we go out - old ladies, the butchers, young women - we get so many comments about how cute he is with his head of thick blonde hair that it gets embarrassing! And he and Loey are beginning to really take notice of each other. They smiled at each other this morning, but more usually their interactions consist of us making sure that Loey doesn’t eat him (putting everything in reach into his mouth is second only to the crawling practice).

And here’s a picture of Huey in his massive nappy, laughing at one of our bad jokes: