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Preemies
only turning head to one side?
for as long as I remember, Charlotte has only ever turned her head to one side while sleeping (she sleeps 18-20 hours a day still). I mentioned it to the pedi at her 2 month because I don't want her to have a flat head, and of course I'm concerned that she may have weak muscles on the one side from it or because of it.
Anyway,she kind of blew it off, saying I just need to work with her to get her to rotate her head. Every time I lay her down, I put her head to the opposite side and she quickly rolls it to the other side immediately. I've even tried shaking toys in the opposite direction to get her to turn her head and she won't. Even in the swing, carseat, bumbo, etc. her head is always always to the right.
We got kicked out of First Steps before she even had an evaluation because she was waking up to nurse (ugh, a whole different story) and they felt she was ok.
Has anyone else experienced this? Who can assess it? Do they need therapy?
Mom to 2 beautiful girls, 3 yrs and 22 months old. My 2nd was born at 32 weeks due to Rhogam failure/severe complications from Rh disease and is our miracle. She has bilateral auditory neuropathy and a cochlear implant, activated 4/5/2012 at 19 months.
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Re: only turning head to one side?
not sure who ECl is...but we have First Steps as a developmental program..i just don't know what to do for an assessment since she was kicked out of the program before she ever got evaluated and the pedi doesnt think it's a big deal. UGH.
just talked to my SIL and her daughter (FT) had this problem and ended up in several months of Physical Therapy after it got to the point she had a flat head and a flat ear. :- I'd like to have it assessed before it gets that bad, kwim??
ETA: when First Steps dropped here before the eval, they said she could get back into the program at any time if it is needed, but she would need a referral from the pedi.
ECI is Early Childhood Intervention. I'm guessing it's the same as First Steps...How frustrating that you need a referral from the pedi! Can you voice your concern again to the pedi and explain how you don't want to wait. I would definitely do what I could to get her evaluated again. It's better to be safe than sorry!
My son had/has this exact same thing. After bringing him home from the NICU, it was clearly obvious he preferred his right side. No matter how many times I tried to turn him/distract, etc., he would always turn it back. His head was also quite flat on that side. After doing some research and talking to others, we started seeing an OT and a chiropractor. Once a week we see the OT who does craniosacral therapy on him (we saw her too to improve his AR). This type of therapy gets things working in harmony again. She said he has a mild from of torticollis. We also see the chiropractor once a week who does adjustments. He has seen these people for probably a total of 10 times each, and we already see a huge change. His head is starting to round out and he is more able to freely move his head from side to side.
If I were you, I'd look in to seeing a chiropractor, making sure they specialize in infants! Most chiropractors also do the craniosacral therapy so I don't know if you'd need to see an OT too. I guess it wouldn't hurt though.
I'd simply bring it up with the doctor again and explain that I need a referral. Even if he didn't think it was an issue, I would say for my peace of mind I'd like the evaluation. If he continued to not listen to my concerns, I'd look for a new pedi!
Good luck - my son has a similar preference to the right side (we haven't had ECI eval yet, but the OT and PT in the NICU thought it was mild). Interesting information about the chiro too.
Evan had a definite preference to his right side when he came home. We were told that a lot of the babies from NICU do, because that's the side all the nurses approach them from. He did get a pretty significant flat spot from it too. We did several things;
When we were holding him turned his head to the side that would stretch the muscles that wanted to stay shortened. So.......I have to think about this. His head was turning right, so the right sided muscles were tighter/shorter, so when we held him with his tummy to our chest we would lay him so he was actually laying on the flatter side of his head....the right, but facing his left. I used a baby sling a fair amount partly for this reason.
We rotated which arm we held him in for feedings, we were told this was important by his PT.
We did as much tummy time etc as we could, and didn't feel guilty about things like the excersaucer which kept him off of his head.
We rotated the direction we layed him down in his crib, so that he had to look left to see us coming to him.
It did eventually round out quite a lot. I still think his head is a bit more tall and narrow than it should be, but the back is round, so it looks a lot better than it did. If your LO ends up with a flat spot, I know a fair amount of kids who end up with a helmet to help correct it.