I took Emily to the pediatrician today to have them check out her head. For some time now, it has looked “crooked” to me, having a flat spot on one side and a “bump” on the other. I’ve read alot about this on TwinStuff and I figured a trip to the Peds was warranted, because if it is *something*, now is the time to correct it.
Sure enough, I was right. Emily has Plagiocephaly and mild Torticollis. Her plagiocephaly is considered positional, vs. genetic. This means that her head shape was “molded” in utero and has gotten worse because of how she holds her head — generally to the right. You can tell the misshapen head if you look from the top of her head.
Her right ear is forward a bit and her forhead is angled — more forward on the right as well. And, of course the flat spot on the right and the “bump” on the left. She does not have facial feature misalignment, but this is common when not corrected.
The Torticollis means that the muscles in the right side of her neck are too tight and thus she turns to the right more.
Our “fix” is to position her head more on the left and do a neck stretch of the right muscles 5 times per day for 5 seconds. And, in a month of doing this we go back to see the Dr. again to see if our work has done any good. If not, we may have to see a physical therapist and beyond that is a helmut (which we certainly hope we don’t have to go to).
Dr. says this is very fixable with positioning and muscle stretching and hopefully that’s all it will take for Em. And, since none of the bones in her head have fused yet, we shouldn’t have any problems naturally moving everything into place.
The Dr. also has a sheet with her misalignments noted so that we can see how it is progressing in a month. I’ll take some pictures to see if we can see progression as well.
Ron joked when I got back that if I hadn’t learned about this on Twinstuff and thought to get it diagnosed, he’d have a crooked head little girl. 🙂
What a thing to have to think about! Oh, any btw, while this is more common now in all babies because of them sleeping on their backs, it’s VERY common in twins because of the lack of space in utero! I guess Abby was taking up all the space!