A TEN-year-old girl who endured years of painful hip operations is urging parents to check their babies as part of a national awareness campaign.

Vanessa Thurston, of Parsonage Road, Bridport, spent weeks in a body cast when she was four years old following surgery because she was not diagnosed with a hip condition as a baby.

She is helping launch the first Baby Hip Health Week with her story to encourage all parents to look out for early signs of developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH).

The awareness week has been organised by the charity Steps and starts on October 24.

Vanessa, who now walks normally and enjoys cycling and dancing, said: "It is not a problem for me now. I go to dancing classes once a week and it doesn't hurt."

Sue Banton, director of Steps, said: "Treatment is simple if started in the first few months, but becomes more complex in older children and the later is it detected the more likelihood of osteoarthritis of the hip as a adult.

"A missed diagnosis can be devastating to both the child and the parents' lives."

Vanessa was diagnosed with DDH after she was referred to a physiotherapist to correct a gait in her walking.

During an operation at Southampton General Hospital a 1.5cm section of her thigh was removed and a new hip socket created.

For the next six weeks Vanessa was in a hip spica - a plaster cast from the chest to the ankle on the affected leg and to the knee on the other - followed by weeks in a shorter plaster with a stick between her legs to hold them at right angles.

Vanessa had to be carried everywhere by her mum and dad Chris, and had intensive physiotherapy and hydrotherapy.

Vanessa's mum Elaine Thurston said: "We were totally ignorant at the time. I knew doctors check for clicky hip but that is all I knew about it.

"Vanessa was walking at the normal age and wasn't in any pain, but we did notice that one leg was shorter than the other.

She hopes the awareness week will help parents spot any problems in their children's hips as soon as possible.

"If parents notice their children walking with a limp or gait, or one leg is shorter that the other, they should definitely insist that they get sent for a scan," she said. "If we were better informed we would have got Vanessa scanned much sooner."