Have you ever heard of Torticollis??? Basically it is a twisted neck in which the head is tipped to one side while the chin is turned to the other.?? I think Troy has it.?? Always something isn’t it??? I will have this confirmed (or not) tomorrow when we take him to the Cranial Specialist for an evaluation.?? I have seen the symptoms for quite some time but I didn’t put two and two together until recently and now that I have, I am pretty convinced.?? In fact, when I ran it by the pediatrician, he just started writing me a script for physical therapy before he even evaluated it.?? I had to laugh at that.?? My children’s pediatrician and I have quite a team approach to their medical care.

His symptoms are:

*?? Since birth, Troy has never liked to sleep with his head turned.?? If I lay him on his side, he can tolerate it for awhile because his neck isn’t actually turned but even then he shimmies until he gets to his back.

*?? When I lay him on my chest, I have to make him turn his head or he buries his face in my shoulder.?? Again, he doesn’t like to sleep with his neck turned.

*?? He leans his head slightly to the right with his chin tilted slightly to the left.

*?? Instead of raising his head to look at you, he usually tucks his chin down and raises his eyes (which is quite coy and adorable but my instinct for quite sometime has been that there is a physical reason for it).

*?? He has Brachycephaly with (I think) slight Plagiocephaly.?? The back of his head is flat.?? This is very common for babies with Torticollis.

*?? Often times, if I am rocking Troy to sleep, he will fall asleep and then wake up and cry several times.?? When I swaddle him and lay him down he stays out.?? I am now wondering if sleeping in my arms is uncomfortable sometimes because I hold him with my right arm so I may not be supporting his neck in a way that is comfortable for him.?? I am going to switch arms and see if that helps.

*?? Additionally, I think something is “off” with his right shoulder because he holds it oddly quite often.?? He positions it back instead of forward.

Torticollis can either be a congenital condition or it can occur because of the way that baby was laying inutero.?? It can also occur due to a traumatic birth (injury to neck happens at birth).

We will be looking at physical therapy and a DOC Band for his head that he may wear for a few months.?? The good news is that he does have good range of motion even still so it seems that time and exercise should really help him.???? I am anxious to see what the specialists have to say about this.

He weighed 13.13 at his four month appointment and was 24.5 inches long.?? 25th% which is pretty AWESOME for a preemie.

Update on Tori:

She is good as gold – THANK GOD!!!!?? She weighed 28 pounds at 3 years 9 months and that was fully dressed.?? :)?? She, again, screamed through her flu shot then told everyone what a great job she did.?? I like her world.

Update on Ty:

Ty will be having surgery soon for his belly hernia.?? When babies are born prematurely, they use muscles that are not fully developed and this often creates hernias.?? Ty had bi-inguinal hernia surgery as a baby but we were waiting until he got older to do the belly surgery as we were hoping to avoid it.?? No such luck.

The excitement never ends around here…