Well, it looks like our little Eli has a condition called
Torticollis. What this essentially means is that he favors tilting his head to one side due to a stiff muscle on the opposite side of his neck. It's nothing serious yet and can be treated with stretches and making sure to encourage him to turn his neck by positioning everything that he wants to look at in that direction. I had always noticed he had his head tilted to one side a lot, but I just thought it was due to his head being heavy and his neck not being mature yet. Holly noticed this, too, and asked if I had looked into it being a condition. Then I started to research it and found numerous websites about it. We went to the doctor today and it was confirmed. We will do stretches at home throughout the day for a month and if it doesn't improve he will need to go to physical therapy. As long as it is worked with and corrected before he is a year old, he should be fine. Many infants with torticollis also have one side of their head flatter than the other, which he doesn't have, so that is good. This can also explain why he hates tummy time so much. So, we will have to work on this and make sure he gets a good amount of tummy time, which will help build his neck muscles. Here are pictures that show his head tilt:
I'm just glad we are addressing this now and not later as it is harder to correct later. I will keep everyone posted on our progress. We go to a chiropractor on Wednesday, too, so we'll see what they have to say. I can't help but wonder if this occurred in utero. I carried so low the last month or so and I had a lot of pelvic pain, which may have been his head smashed against my pelvis. I often wondered if I had so much pain what it would do to his poor head!! But, there is no telling if this was the case or not. All we can do is work on correcting it!! Wish us luck!
7 comments:
I am so glad that Holly knew of this condition though another child having it in the child care center she worked at in Lamoni while a college student.I never heard of this and thought the same as you Amy as to why Eli favored turning his little to his left. I'm so glad this was discovered so soon and will be corrected with exercise, I wonder why the doctor didn't spot it herself, seems like this should be a question the doctor should ask the parent as to if she or he had noticed a favoring of turning their baby's head to one side, I know the doctors can't spot everything in the office visits and no one know's the baby more than the parents so all the more reason the doctor should ask this question along with others, that's called being thorough! After all the parents don't know all the questions to be asked. Can you tell I'm a protective Grandma Bear? God bless you Eli, Grandma loves you. xxoo
Sorry we kept playing phone tag about this! I'm glad that it is correctable though! How is he liking the exercises so far?
You're very perceptive to notice that. I don't know if I would. But I have to say the pictures are hillarious when you have them all together like that. Now I'm going to look back at all of his other photos to see if they're all like that. Hope it goes well. I bet you never thought you'd be taking your baby to a chiropractor!
i must say, torticollis can be cute. and i do think the series of photos of his head tilting is adorable. my daughter (now 19 months) had (has?) a similar level of head tilt--it didn't seem too severe, though at times she'd fall asleep in her stroller and it would look as if her head was going to fall right off! Her pediatrician didn't seem too concerned with this and opted to wait a period of several months to see if it improved...which it did. Even though she holds her head straight for most of the day, I notice that when she falls asleep in her stroller, her head still slightly tilts to the left side. Bc of that, I still try to exercise her neck muscles...
Hello!
I found your blog after searching 'torticollis' on the web. My baby boy was just diagnosed with the same condition this week at 3 1/2 mths old. I had noticed his head looked little flatter but I had not noticed the tilt, thank goodness his doctor was able to recognize it at a well visir. The pictures of your baby boy's tilt on this post looks just like my baby's... So after reading your 'torticollis' post I fast forwarded to your current pictures and saw that Eli has NO trace of a tilt anymore! This has given me great hope and comfort. Thank you and baby Eli for being so inspirational. I only hope my baby makes such a speedy recovery and I am now going to look into finding a chirpractor to work with us, something that I never even thought of.
God bless to you adorable baby and thank you for showing me it can be fixed!
My little girl got diagnosed on tuesday. I found your blog via google. I realize that you posted this a while ago. I hope all is well with your little one.
Thank you for posting.
Megan Sommer
Good morning and Merry Christmas. I just ran across your blog after finding out about torticollis on the internet. I'm pretty much convinced my 3-mont-old son has this, but we haven't had it confirmed yet. How is your little guy doing now?
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