Torticollis

My neice had this also. My sister just had to take her to physical therapy for awhile and it was corrected. She is now a very normal, extrememly active 2 yr old. Nothing to worry about because it was caught early and it is more common than we think. Good luck!

Our doctor noticed at 2 weeks that our son had torticollis. We got treatment (physical therapy) right away. It wasn't very hard to correct at all.

I know that it can get more serious, but as long as you're taking care of it - it will be fine.

-J.

It sounds like this is a mild case, which is quite common. It can easily be corrected by Physical Therapy, as they see it all the time. Good luck and don't worry! If there is going to be something "wrong" with your baby, this would be one of my choices!

My son had a mild case of it, we didn't really catch it. He was our first and looking back it makes sense. He always turned his head one way when sleeping, laying on the floor. Sometimes it happens. My second had a slight case too, but we noticed right away and did therapy with him and he's just fine.

The thing about torticollis, is it's nothing serious and it is fixable. But in the case of our son, it contributed to him getting a flat head on one side. In my son's case we had to get a helmet that helped round out his hear. It was a relatively simple proceedure and he's perfectly fine now. Not hat that's going to happen to your child. You seem to have caught it early, so it's probably not an issue for your son.

If you take him to therapy now, it probably will only take a very short time to correct the torticollis.

I'm a soon to be mom (Due date Jan 20). I'm a nurse and my husband is a chiropractor. He's seen great results using chiropractic to treat torticollis. They didn't teach us much about chiropractic going through nursing school, but after helping him out at his office every once in a while I'm so surprised the positive changes that occur in babies using chiropractic. Constipation, Ear Infections, Colic, and yes Torticollis.

So that would be my advise,

J., 25 soon to be mom

my daughter had this, it wasn't very bad (apparently) since she could move her head still each direction, so our doc just gave us some at home exercises to do. it cleared up really fast once we started working on it =) feel free to pm me if you like

My daughter had the same thing. One day she just looked at me and her head was tilited to the right. When I noticed this I switched everything I was doing with her to the other side. We started her in physical therapy when she was about 2 mths old and she just had her last appt in September which made her just about 6 mth old. She is now 8 mth old and doing great. We went to PT once a week - she hated it at 1st and cried most of the time. Try to make your appts doing his best time of day. They will give you exercises to do at home w/your child.

It's a very common thing - please don't think of it as something wrong w/your baby. You're being proactive which is great. It beats having him wear one of those helmets. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Our little guy had torticollis too. We mentioned our concern at his 4 month check up - his head was always cocked to the right and his right ear looked bigger than the other - actually he had flattened the right side of his head a bit so the ear had come forward a little. We ended up using PT to fix the torticollis and our little guy wore a cranio cap for a couple of months. A cranio cap is a 'baby helmet' that reshapes the baby's head as he grows. Tough decision at the time but it didn't bother him at all and now his head is shaped perfectly and he has a full range of motion. We went through Children's West and they were fabulous. We enjoyed the PT appointments and learned to do a lot of the exercises at home. Good luck! Also -- our insurance covered 100% of the entire treatment - no copays.

Torticollis is very common for young babies to have. Chiropractic care is very helpful in conjunction with some physical therapy to alleviate torticollis faster. To find a pediatric chiropractor in your area visit www.icpa4kids.org. They also have information about torticollis on their website. Good luck!

Hi! My best friends third daughter probably had torticollis (not diagnosed). She would always go to sleep with her head to one side and looking up. (It looked like she was having a seizure sort of!). It was the stangest thing. She grew out of it. Her Dr. wasn't worried at all and it did resolve itself no problem. I think there are alot of kids who have this-just not diagnosed. It is probably more common than we think. As long as it isn't causing breathing problems or anything, I am sure it will correct itself in time as your child gets stronger neck muscles.

I think my nephew, who is now 3, had this and you can't tell at all anymore. I'm thinking it totally disappeared by the time he was 1. He is a twin and they think it developed because of how we was positioned in the womb with his brother.

Hi S.-

My son (and his cousin) both had this as infants, physical therapy takes care of it, really! : )

The scariest part of the whole episode was being told that our son might need to wear a helmet to correct flattening to his skull caused by the torticollis. When the baby keeps their head tilted to one side, the result can be some flattening of the skull, if it's extreme, a helmet might be discussed to correct the flattening.

A side note re: Helmets- Our experience with specialists in regards to the helmet was very negative. The "specialist" we were referred to used out of date medical statistics to demonstrate the need for a helmet and turned out to be the helmet salesperson, as well as the person determining whether our son might need a helmet. The helmets are very expensive and tend to be considered "experimental" by insurance companies, i.e. aren't covered by insurance. We did not end up with a helmet.

Our son did the physical therapy and we made a concerted effort to keep him off of his back at all times other than while sleeping at night (the housecleaning suffered, as he spent naptime sleeping on his tummy on one of our chests for a few months) and everything was fine. This was the case with his cousin as well. From what I understand, this is very regularly the case.

The physical therapy wasn't difficult and wasn't even incredibly lengthy in duration. Well, well worth it and honestly, nothing to stress about. It's hard to hear that there's something "wrong" with your baby, but this is really fix-able.

Good luck!!

M.