Plagiocephaly . . . . what-ephaly?
April 24, 2009 by Lisa Beth
You know how they tell you to rotate your baby’s head from side to side when they are sleeping to avoid a flat head? Well, DO IT! Because Brooklyn sleeps so long at night, AND has a preferential for looking to the right, she has developed a very flat head on one side. The technical term is plagiocephaly. Example…
See the flat spot on the top? We had to take her to a physical therapist last week. They measured her head and we found out that her “head dent” is actually bordering severe. So severe, they might have to put her in a helmet in a few weeks!! A helmet for babies – all sorts of ridiculous thoughts were going through my head. I first pictured a baseball helmet on my infant, what will people think? Then they showed me what the helmet actually looks like….not as bad as I thought, but still, I would like to try to avoid this if possible.She would have to wear the helmet 23 hours a day for 3-4 months.
So for now we are doing an extensive repositioning program with our baby girl. No time is to be spent on her right side, except of course while sleeping, because it is kind of unavoidable-her head just naturally falls in this direction. Of course I try to position her looking to the left when I lay her down, but with her sleeping 10 hours at night, this mamma can’t seem to force herself up every 2 hours if not completely necessary. (If I do wake up, I go and check on her and about half the time I have to move her head to the other side). We also have stretches to do with her every night to ensure the muscles in her neck don’t tighten up from always wanting to look to her right.
You never saw kids when I was growing up wearing helmets, but I suppose that is because we all slept on our tummies. Now, of course, this is a big no-no. Wyatt never had a flat head either, and he slept these long hours too, but I truely believe it is because he is so hard-headed. In more than one way. Funny thing though, the physical therapist actually said there may be some truth to that – some kids may have harder skulls than others. And if you’ve ever been head-butted by Wyatt, you know that he has one hard head.
Kylee on Mon, 27th Apr 2009 7:46 am
Hey Lisa – Jordan was starting to develop flat head from favoring one side, only he was about 5 weeks old when we took note. We took him to the chiropracter and noticed a significant improvement in about a week. We only went three times and wah-lah, no more right side only. Not saying this will work for Brooklyn, but if you are interested we went to Shane Miller at Capital Chiropractic.
Plagiocephaly update : The Hustad Family - How to Have a Blog on Fri, 12th Jun 2009 9:34 pm
[...] the curse of the flat head? Need a reminder, see this blog. Brooklyn has had her second recheck for her plagiocephaly and it looks [...]