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The rate of sudden infant death syndrome has fallen by over 50 percent in the last two decades. It seems American parents have acted on the advice of physicians to lay their sleeping babies on their backs – but sometimes these babies wind up with an unusual symptom.
“How do you think her head is looking?” asks Laura Plank, cranial orthotist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
“I think it looks good,” Jill Ramos says.
Jill’s daughter, Samantha, was only 2 months old when her parents noticed something odd.
“In the hospital, they said make sure you keep her on her back,” Ramos said. “… Everything I read said that. So that was where she was going to be, and about eight or nine weeks [later], that’s when I started noticing [that the back of her head was starting to flatten].”
The condition that leads to the flattening of babies’ heads is caused when babies spend most of their time lying on their back. It’s harmless, and usually the solution is simple.
“Let them play on their tummies and a vast majority will get better,” explains Dr. Andrew Reisner. “But, for those few cases that do not respond to repositioning, if they are severe, and particularly, if they worsen, only then would I consider a cranio-orthosis.”
A cranio-orthosis is typically a helmet that applies gentle pressure to correct the shape of the skull. Samantha was fitted with one at seven months, which mostly she ignores.
“Occasionally she’ll reach up and feel it or she’ll feel her head, but she doesn’t mind it at all,” her mom says.
She says the only ones that do mind are strangers.
“Lots of looks, lots of comments, lots of people running up saying what’s wrong with the baby,” Jill says. “I just say we’re rounding out her head, she has a flat spot.”
Doctors urge parents to keep sleeping children on their backs, but Plank also urges the importance of babies spending time on their stomachs.
“My biggest advice to parents is tummy time,” says Laura Plank. “If they are awake and they are being supervised, it is okay for them to be on their tummy.”
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