My Baby Is Tortilly Cute

Noble is the fulfillment of my dream...he is the third baby. If you have known me for a while, you know of my thing with odds.  I love odd numbers. In everything. I even assign "odd/even" status to things that cannot possibly be odd or even. Like candy color - some Skittles give off an odd vibe.  But that's just a touch of crazy, no big deal. The point is, I wanted LOTS of babies, in an odd grouping.  I was thinking seven, or nine.  After I had one, I decided to trim "lots" down to three. I had to fight for baby 3, both with my husband, and my body. After a long time of trying and no luck, we discovered we were pregnant with baby 3.  The finding out was odd in itself. We had been in Singapore for Kevin's work exactly 2 weeks when we discovered the pregnancy, or as we affectionately referred to him, the stowaway.  I was finally getting my odd number of babies!

Fast forward to May 2012.  I was ready to burst. I know every pregnant person feels this way, but I really felt like there was NO MORE ROOM for this baby to expand. Finally, his birth day came!  I had just been told we had our third boy, and I got a quick peek at him.  Then, while they put me back together from the C-section, I heard a nurse tell Kevin that he looked "a little fuller" on one side of his face.  She thought it was probably from his position in the womb and said it should even out.  It never did.

Almost immediately after bringing him home, I noticed that he preferred to turn his head to the left while sleeping, and had a harder time lifting his head to nurse on one side than the on the other. I repositioned him in the crib and alternated sides and positions while nursing. No matter how often I turned his head, he always managed to wriggle back to the left. He started to develop a flat spot on the left side, and coupled with the fullness in his face not going away, I became worried. At his next check up, I asked the doctor about it.  His pediatrician said he had torticollis, which essentially means his neck is stiff.  Technically, the muscles were very tight and strong on one side, loose and weak on the other.  Turning to his "non-preferred" side was difficult and painful, and he held his head tilted at an angle instead of at midline (straight up and down).

Torticollis often causes a flat spot to develop on an infant's skull, since there is always pressure on that area.  When the flat spot is on the side, it is called Plagiocephaly.  Noble has several visible asymmetries typical of Plagio:  One cheek seems fuller, one ear is forward, one eye seems smaller, and of course there is the flat area behind the left ear.  Because this area should be round and it is instead "squished" flat, it has actually shifted that whole side of the head/face forward.  It is more common these days for babies to develop flat spots on their skulls since they now sleep on their backs in an effort to prevent SIDS.  Poor Noble was much bigger than my first 2 babies, and ran out of room to grow, or perhaps just settled in one comfy spot inside mommy.  However it happened, the diminished range of motion in his neck and the skull shift started in the womb.  It worsened when he slept with his head to one side in his early weeks.  We are learning more each day about how to help him.  I'll post more about those efforts later. 

Among other tidbits of our lives, this blog will chronicle our journey through attempting to fix my odd numbered baby's odd-shaped head.  And I don't mind bragging...Noble is "tortilly" cute!