PT

Today has been a long day so far and it's only lunchtime. This morning we had to take Charlie to physical therapy for his Torticollis. Torticollis is a condition that occurs when the muscle on one side of a baby's neck becomes tighter than the other, pulling the head and neck to that side. His is getting so bad that his shoulder is now also being affected - he's holding it up by his ear. Apparently he was born with this and it occured because of how he was positioned in the womb. We've known that he has this condition since he was about 10 weeks old when our pediatrician confirmed Ryan's suspicions that he indeed did have this condition and made this PT appointment for us. His "favoring" his right side has gotten worse in the past 2 weeks so we had started doing some stretches and exercises on our own thanks to our friend the occupational therapist, Megan Gordon. And I'm glad we did. She gave us alot of advice including:
- 4 or 5 stretches to do 3 times a day
- buying a side sleep positioner to get him to sleep on his side
- a way to carry him that's comforting and stretches the tight muscle
- weekly, and if improvements don't come soon, bi-weekly appointments at the clinic

So basically I'm happy he's getting help but I'm worried too. The therapist also pointed out that part of his head is starting to flatten. I know this is common in kids but it's worse for him since he has this additional problem. So she said it's really important for us to fix the issues now because if we don't, we may have to see a PLASTIC SURGEON when he's 9 months or so. That would be awful. :(

Here's a picture of him with his head cocked to the right (you can see his shoulder is pulled up too):


Poor little guy. Pray for him if you think about it (and for me - I think I might hate the exercises more than he does!).