Day Twenty-Eight

Actual Date: Thursday, April 22, 2010

Today Parker had his first Physical Therapy appointment for his Torticollis. For those of you who don't know what Torticollis is, basically he had a very tight muscle in his neck that held his head in an award position, which resulted in his Plagiocephaly.

Ever since he was about 2 1/2 months old I started to notice that he always held his head to one side. Before that I thought it was because he was a baby and he couldn't hold his head up to good on his own. But as he started getting older and it wasn't improving, I started to worry. The doctor said he had Torticollis and gave us some neck stretches to do and said she would look at it during his next appointment at 4 months. We worked hard on those neck stretches and he had such a great improvement as far as the tightness letting up.

At his 4 month appointment the doctor said he looked great as far as the neck tightness but now she said he was behind pulling up his head (when he lays on his back and you pull him up with his hands he should have been able to tuck his chin in and "help" pull up). So she told us some exercises to do to work on that. But then I showed her the back of his head and how it looked to me to be flat. She said that is common in Torticollis babies and to try to get him sitting up in his Bumbo seat and see if it rounds itself back out.

Fast forward to today,we kept doing out stretches and added in the neck exercises and bumbo seat and it helped but just not enough. Now that the tightness in his neck is all gone Parker has been doing a lot better on holding his head up straight, unless he's really tired or cranky. And he's also developed this habit of throwing himself straight back and he's so strong it's hard to hold him sometimes. We were refereed to physical therapy to help strenghten the muscles in his neck and see what else we could do.

The first appointment went great. He had fun! His eyes light up as he saw the Therapist pulling out of the fun toys. It is so cute to watch him because we cheer when he does good and he gets the biggest smile like he is so proud of himself. We got some new exercises and stretches to do that should help too. She also said that she thinks he throws himself backwards because that is probably how he learned to look behind him since he couldn't turn his head like he should because of the Torticollis. Makes sense. As a result, his back muscles are very strong but his trunk and tummy muscles are weak. So we'll work on those abs and he'll be sporting a six pack before you know it!

It looks like we will be making two trips a week for the next 4-6 months to physical therapy. That's on top of his weekly growth adjustments trips at the Doc Band office in Dallas. The picture above is my calender showing this last month. It'll be challenging fitting everything in, especially with our upcoming trip to California and Reno but I'll make it work. I've been told I'm a "stay at home Mom who's never home."