''Would Ya Look At That Boy's Head!''

by Cait 11:53 AM 0 comments Baby Parenting plagiocephaly torticollis

You like that "So I Married An Axe Murderer" quote!  So good!  One of my favorite films!

Anyway...

Let's rewind to our unborn baby's five month prenatal anatomy ultrasound.  My husband and I were so excited.  We were eager to learn the gender of our child and to see how he was growing.

Everything looked pretty good, barring an echogenic focus, which I'll discuss in a later post.  The technician did mention, however, that the baby was breech.  Not to worry, they assured us.  He had plenty of time to flip around.

The remaining four months of my pregnancy flew by, and before we knew it, we were in the final countdown.  I went to one of my last ultrasounds, where I was informed that the baby was still breech.  He must have been very comfortable where he was! We needed to schedule a c-section, which I will also address in a future post.

The baby was born and we were very happy to have a healthy little boy.

As time went on, we did start to notice that our son only really turned his head in one direction. Whenever he slept, he always faced the right side of his crib.  He was also developing a bit of a flat spot from always having his head in the same position.

We brought this up with the pediatrician and he said that our boy had torticollis, which is a tightening of a muscle on one side of the neck.  The doctor also told us that the flat spot was called plagiocephaly.  He said that physical therapy could help correct both things, and that the earlier invention was sought, the better.

Plagiocephaly is basically having an asymmetrical skull.  It is becoming more common in infants due to babies sleeping on their backs.  In our case, it was likely caused from his position in utero, as well as the torticollis.

We did bring our son to physical therapy every week and worked on exercises to improve his neck. We went to CCMC, which has been wonderful.  While his torticolis continued to improve, the plagiocephaly didn't.  The physical therapist recommended getting a helmet to correct the plagiocephaly.

I was not a huge fan of my son needing a helmet.  It made me feel like I had done something wrong. I also wasn't crazy about the idea of people staring at him when we were out in public, or people asking me why he had to wear a helmet.

Like I said, I wasn't crazy about the idea, but it was not about me.  It was about my son.  It was about fixing something that could affect his confidence later in life.  We were told that infants usually only need to wear the helmets for about 8 to 10 weeks anyway.  He will not remember wearing it at all.

My husband and I agreed that we should go ahead with getting a helmet.  We had to make this decision quickly because the younger a baby is, the easier it is to correct, as the bones in the skull are not yet fused.  Now we needed to decide where to go for the helmet.  We had two choices: Cranial Technologies or Hanger Clinic.

In the end, we chose to go with Cranial Technologies.  We chose CT for two big reasons.  The first reason was that this is all Cranial Technologies does.  They specialize in correcting plagiocephaly and have a good track record.  The second reason we chose them was because their version of the helmet (the Doc Band) was open at the top of the head.  We were getting into the warmer months and we thought our son would be a bit more comfortable in the Doc Band than the full helmet that Hanger offered.

The only downside of choosing Cranial Technologies was the fact that they only have two locations in the state, Madison and Cheshire.  Both locations were about an hour away from where we lived, so the weekly drives there were sometimes a pain.

Fast forward eight weeks, and our son was out of the helmet.  He is now the owner of a nice, round noggin!