Baby x ray

[yellowmeerkat]

Hi all

I’m having major mum guilt / anxiety over recent hip/pelvis x days that my 9 month old daughter had.
She had a few episodes of funny crawling (which I’ve since discovered was a normal variant).
We were referred to orthopaedics and were expecting the consultant to see her / to chat to us first but he demanded we attended for an x Ray on arrival before seeing him and we felt so flustered we just went along with it. They did 2 x rays.
All normal thankfully but we weren’t really concerned as she had been crawling normally 99% of the time and we were hoping to chat to the consultant to avoid any unnecessary tests.

Ive spent the past few weeks in turmoil feeling so guilty about the unnecessary radiation she has been exposed to and panicking. I understand absolute risks are small but I don’t want to have taken any risk! Mainly worried given her age and the area that has received radiation (ovaries etc). Everywhere says babies are much more sensitive to radiation and I just feel it was all so unnecessary.

can any lovely mumsnet mummies whose babies have had x rays (or mummies themselves who had them as babies) reassure me that all will be ok!

Thanks in advance from a very worried mummy

The level of radiation is similar to a few sunny days. Your baby is, and will be, fine. On balance the risk of missing something major through not x-raying far far outweighs the risk of the x-rays. For reference, I had x-rays at 37 weeks pregnant. As with your daughter, they just took the minimum they needed to.

It's the same as if you'd done a short haul flight for holiday.

Are you positive it wasn't an ultrasound? Hip ultrasounds are common for babies, my ds had one.

Ultrasound isn't radiation at all, it's just sound

And anyway as pp said, it's no more than taking your baby on a flight

I had lots of X-rays as a baby (up to age 5) as I had hip dysplasia. No ill effects at all into adult hood xx

I'm going to say this as kindly as possible:

Get help for your anxiety.

The dr can't possibly treat your daughter before having X-rays. If he had decided to do x y z to help her crawling like referring to physio and she actually had hip dysplasia no doubt you'd be making a formal complaint because physio made it worse:

He doesn't have x ray vision and can't diagnose without an x ray.

No doubt you wouldn't be asking about the risks of radiation if you took her to Spain on a holiday as a plane trip has about the same radiation as an x ray

Basically unfortunately for you she won't turn into super man and have x ray vision and be able to
Fly you places.

Chill your beans

Thanks for the replies and reassurance!

@Mumoftwo1316 it was definitely x rays unfortunately.

@tiredmumma8696 thanks so much for your reassurance, this is definitely what I needed to hear, so glad you’ve had no subsequent problems.