TODDLER with Turned-out feet takes her first steps after having both her legs broken during surgery
Atoddler born with a rare condition that made her feet run out at right angles has taken her first steps. Sophie Parker was born with dislocated hips due to a rare condition called Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip (DDH).
This meant she couldn’t straighten her legs, stand on her own, or walk.
The toddler, from Redhill, Surrey, had to have both of her legs broken and metal bolts inserted to rebuild her hips.
Without the surgery, it is likely that Sophie, now two, would not have been able to walk properly, and she would have had further hip problems in the future.
Her mother Laura picked up on her condition when she noticed her feet were sticking outwards.
Mrs Parker, 31, said: "Her feet were pointing at right angles, from the age of just eight weeks old.
"I was a first time mum and I didn’t know if Sophie was developing correctly.
"Doctors reassured me there was nothing wrong, but it just didn’t look normal."
She said: ‘Had her condition been picked up earlier, it could have potentially been rectified with a less invasive procedure, involving what is known as a Pavlik Harness where the hips are held in place to encourage them to grow around the socket.
As Sophie began to crawl, Laura and her husband Lee noticed Sophie was dragging her legs along the floor.
‘It looked as if she had wonky hips. It was clear that she had a problem with her stability.’ said Mr Parker, 36.
A further scan revealed that Sophie didn't have fully formed hip joints and both were severely dislocated.
At 14 months old, Sophie went through the first of two procedures to try and reposition her hips.
This involved breaking one of her femurs each time and reducing the hip socket around the top of her leg, before bolting them back into the correct position.
"Just hearing what they were going to do to her was terrifying," said Mrs Parker. "It sounded frightening but we were told by the surgeon that it was the only option."
Following the surgery, Sophie had to wear a full body cast, which stretched from her chest to her ankles, to allow her hip sockets to grow back around the bones.
She was strapped into the cast for 24-hours a day, to hold her hips in place.
Just weeks after the second operation, her cast was removed and Sophie began to try and pull herself up on fur- niture, and move around the house in her walker. "She can now walk, but she gets tired quite quickly and then tries to revert back to crawling. She’s getting there though," Mrs. Parker said.
Sophie's parents are now battling to raise awareness of the rare condition, which affects one to three per cent of newborns but which often isn’t picked up until later in life.