Baby Exercises

At our last doctor's appointment (her 2 month check up) Sadie was diagnosed with torticollis. Apparently that is a condition in which your neck muscles contract involuntarily, causing your head to twist or turn to one side & in her case, it is the left side. We have noticed that she always turns her head to the left no matter what & I had written it down on my list of questions to ask the pediatrician, but before I had a chance to ask her, the doctor brought it up. Apparently it is common with infants & a lot of the time the babies get settled into a comfortable position in the womb so their muscles grow a certain way. This was most likely the case for Sadie & since she was born, she continues to lay the way that is most comfortable to her. After her doctor mentioned it, I went back & looked at all of our pictures & sure enough she has either looked straight forward or to her left since she was born.

The good news is that this is a condition that we can treat & correct. The bad news is that since she favors a certain side, she already has a side of her head that is flatter than the other, therefore her doctor recommended we do physical therapy to help build muscle strength & help round out her head. Unfortunately, it took me 3-4 weeks to get her in to see a physical therapist. In the meantime, Bryan & I had been working with her trying to get her to look right at much as possible.

We finally had her first therapy session this week. Her head is 1 cm off from one side to the other, but the good news is that they told us she was really young, one of the youngest patients they have seen in a while, so we should be able to correct her problem quicker. The therapist taught us several exercises that we are to do at home 8-10 times a day. Also, she is not allowed to go in her nap nanny, swing, bouncer or stroller anymore. All of her play time has to be on a flat surface where she can lay on her tummy or on her right side. She also takes all of her naps on her tummy or on her side, but she can continue to sleep on her back at night. I also have a carrier where I can carry her more often instead of pushing her in the stroller. And we have little tricks that we have to do with her now when we put her in her car seat. She will continue to go to therapy once a week & hopefully in the next month or two we will build her neck strength & round out her head.

Here are a few pictures from the appointment. These are the exercises that we were taught:

As you can tell, she doesn't like to do them all the time because it is very uncomfortable for her. My favorite is the baby sit-ups - we do them every time we have a diaper change.

Here is Bryan doing an exercise with her at home - it's called the football hold:

And here I am going for a walk yesterday afternoon with Sadie in my carrier. She liked it so much the walking put her to sleep :)