Flat head

colemangal85

Since preemies are out in the world longer than normal term babies - that means they are on their backs longer before they start to move around. Anyone have any flat hear issues? 

 LO hates tummy time - but I try do it here and there. Now that he can sit assited - I try do that more because he seems to like it and it gets him off his head but I can't leave the room with him like that. 

 So if your baby did have flat head issues - did you fix it? How did you fix it? How long does it take before you see a difference?  

Missa_g

Does your child have torticollis? If so you should immediately start working with PT to resolve that.

Both my boys had torticollis which caused plagiocephaly. My youngest's tort and plagiocephaly resolved quickly with PT. My oldest's did not so he is now in a DOC band helmet. We have seen a drastic improvement in head shape in just one month.

PhillyGal34

My son was starting to get one. We took him for an eval where they discovered he had torticollis. It's better now and his flat spot is gone. He also likes tummy time now. Turns out it was uncomfortable before.

Mrs. Alice

Both my twins had head issues and needed helmets.  It took 6 weeks in the helmets to correct it.  Before that we tried tummy time, repositioning, etc. but nothing helped.  At 6 mo our pedi referred us to Cranial Tech for an evaluation.  If it is severe enough, your pedi should refer you but there's a chance it will just get better on it's own especially now that he can sit assisted.  Try to also limit time in devices that are on a incline like a bouncer, swing, car seat as these can make it worse.

colemangal85

How do you know if you baby has torticollis?

PhillyGal34

colemangal85:

How do you know if you baby has torticollis?

we found out because we took him to be evaluated due to the flat spot but what they did was move toys from the front of his line of vision to each side to see if he would turn his head. They also stretched his neck (I would NOT feel comfortable doing this with a preemie and a wobbly neck without a doctor showing me how) and found that it was much tighter on the one side.  

 

For us his range of motion was down to 10 degrees when we took him on friday.  All weekend we put his toys to his left and always made him look left for anything. We do not let him watch tv but he loves to look at it so we used it to our benefit. We would put the tv far to his left so if he wanted to see it he had to stretch his neck that way.  When we took him back on Tuesday he was at 80 degrees.  THIS IS NOT NORMAL I imagine.  His case was not very severe either.  We went back for a few weeks and had stretches. He was basically released and we've stopped taking him during flu/rsv season.  But essentially look to see if your LO only looks one way or doesn't look as far to one direction. I feel bad that I never noticed it but as a FTM I had no idea to look.