Mild to Moderate...

abnormality is what the visit to the craniofacialist yesterday revealed. I'll do my best to explain what this means and how it's connected to Henry's other issues.

Henry has torticollis due to tightness in his right-side neck muscles. In most cases they don't know what causes torticollis, but he was born with a tendency to turn his head to the left. Because he had reflux and was not comfortable on his stomach he didn't further strengthen his neck muscles as well as he should have. By laying on his back and with his head turned to one side more than the other, his head flattened a little bit.

The Dr. described a newborn's head as basically a rectangle with rounded corners. Because of the torticollis, Henry's rectangle turned into a parallelogram with the right top and bottom corners dropped. Instead of equally rounded corners some of his corners are more rounded and some are more flat.

The bottom line is that he has a mild to moderate degree of distortion in his head. He said that if we had come to him at 7 months he might have recommended a special helmet for Henry to wear. At this point the helmet doesn't do all that much good and he simply recommended Henry continue his physical therapy to stretch his neck muscles and encourage him to turn his head both ways and not tilt to one side.

The distortion is just aesthetic in that it does not impact cognitive development one bit. I swear i must just be a blind mama, but even after our Pediatrician explained that his head is misshapen, I still can't really "see" it. So needless to say we're fine with his imperfection and think it must just add to his charm. Also, i'm happy to report that Henry has officially crossed the 20 lbs. line! I knew that heavy cream was paying off.


Happy Memorial Day Weekend! (12 month pictures are up on Yahoo)