Misshapen Head

[Kirsty EW]

Hi Lindie,

Gus is one of the bubbas with severe plagiocephaly so is wearing a helmet to try to push the skull plates back into the right spot. Hopefully your little man can be helped with some repositioning. As Gus had such a severe case we received a LOT of advice from our neonatal paediatrician, 2 paediatric physiotherapists, a paediatric chiropractor, the helmet clinic at the children's hospital, and 2 neurosurgeons. The main things we were told when we were trying repositioning to correct the problem were as follows:

1. Try to position the cot (and the baby within the cot) so that the attractive things in the room are forcing him to look on his non-preferred side. They said the most attractive things to a baby are the centre of the room and the window/light source. Toys and things are apparently the second most attractive thing.

2. Try never to carry the baby so that their flat spot is pushing into your arm. For example Gus's flat spot is the back right side of his head so we are only allowed to carry him in the crook of our right arm as holding him in the left arm exerts pressure on the right side of his head.

The same principle applies if you are bottle feeding your bubba. Don't hold your bubba with the flat spot pushing into your arm. Obviously if you are BF it's a bit trickier to change the position of feeding.

3. Don't use a SNS capsule as they have a perfectly flat surface so that encourages your baby to turn their head to their preferred side to get comfortable. (I wish we knew this earlier as we used a capsule until about March!). We were advised to switch to a moulded padded convertible car seat.

4. Try to keep your baby off their back as much as possible when they are awake. Depending on age - this will involve sitting in rocker chairs on a steeper incline than you might otherwise use, positioning bubba on their side or tummy to play. We were also encouraged to get Gus out of the pram bassinet and into the more angled sitting position in the pram earlier than we might otherwise have done so. We were also advised to use baby carriers more than the pram to get the weight off his head altogether.

5. Use padding and wedges to keep your baby off the flat spot when they are in bed. If he is persistently moving onto his flat spot, wait until he is asleep and keep repositioning him.

You can buy wedges to help with repositioning, or you can do it with rolled towells/bunny rugs as follows. Place two rolls down, about 15cm apart, then place a large bunny rug over the top and tuck the sides under each roll. Place your baby between the 2 rolls, not on his side, but with the shoulder of the affected side on top of that side's roll. The other roll is to keep baby from wiggling forward, and the receiving blanket on top of the rolls will help the rolls stay in place.

6. As your baby is a thumb sucker and sucks the thumb on the same side as his flat spot,try covering that hand with a baby mit (the kind you get so baby wont scratch himself). The plan is to try to encourage him to suck the thumb on the other hand. If he's trying to suck his thumb through the mit, show him his other thumb, and encourage him to use it. This will encourage baby to turn his head the other way to get to a thumb.

Umm that's about all I can think of at the moment. You are most welcome to email me should you want to ask any questions off line. xx