keeping it real

This sounds so shallow, but one of my biggest concerns about dealing with the Pavlik harness was how to dress Juno. It's not that I just want to get use out of the cute clothes she was given or that I am concerned with her being "cute"; I want her to look like a normal baby. I don't want people to look at her and see the harness and not my sweet little girl. I don't want her to be a ball of velcro.

I took this picture of Juno in my favorite outfit the day before her first ortho appointment. She had almost outgrown it anyway.

If you've been wondering how the harness looks on a real baby and not an illustration, here it is! The ortho gave us permission to take it off for diaper changes and to change her clothes. She can have it off for a total of an hour every day. However, I found that she was getting frustrated when I took it off often throughout the day--it was a tease. So now I only take it off every few days for a bath and to change her onesie.

Under her harness, she wears a short sleeved, tight onesie. I've tried a couple different things on her legs. She really needs to have something on them to cut down on chafing from the canvas straps on her fat little thighs. First she wore regular tights, which just made it too hard to change her diaper without taking her legs out of the harness. Then I tried babylegs, but they were too thick to wear comfortably under the straps. Finally I cut the legs off a pair of 18-24 month tights and she wears those. They work best, although I have to constantly tug them back up to her thighs.

And here she is, fully dressed for Christmas Eve.
Over the harness, she wears a long-sleeved onesie that's about a size bigger than she would normally wear and a pair of babylegs. I make all the babylegs by cutting the foot off of girl's knee high socks. The knit doesn't fray, so I don't have to do any sewing. I pull the babylegs all the way up to her thighs, over the straps on her legs, and tuck the ends in to her onesie.
You can't even tell she's got something on under her clothes, can you? I think she's pretty darn cute, even though she does look grumpy!
{She's always grumpy in pictures that I post on here; I promise she looks much more pleasant in real life! She's even learning to smile!}
For church I just put a dress over the harness instead of a onesie, or if it's a jumper, I put the dress over the long-sleeved onesie.
Juno could wear pants if they were big enough to not pull her legs together (probably size 9-12 months or so), but I prefer her to wear clothes as close to her size as possible, so for now we're sticking with the babylegs. I think it's less noticeable that she's got the harness on that way. If she's still in the Pavlik harness when it's warm, she'll wear lots and lots and lots of loose, casual dresses, and we'll forego the babylegs--but hopefully it won't come to that!!