Baby head is flat | Imamother

zaq

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 10:02 pm

You have to give him "tummy time" unless you like the idea of having to put him in a special orthopedic helmet for his head to develop normally. I assure you he will like that a whole lot less than being in an unfamiliar position. He doesn't have to like it now--he'll eventually get used to it. You should have been giving him tummy time from the get-go. Infants are supposed to sleep on their backs, not LIVE on their backs. Everyone is so paranoid about putting infants to sleep in their backs that they think it is assur to have them on their fronts, ever. We will soon be raising a whole generation of flat-headed kids. Start putting him on his front when he is awake and his head should soon normalize. If he falls asleep on his front, just flip him over. FTR, an entire generation--namely, YOURS--was put to bed on their fronts, and mothers worried about babies who flipped over in their sleep and wound up on their backs. Yet you managed to survive somehow.

Dolly Welsh

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 10:06 pm

Talk to pediatrician. All the Millennial people were slept on their stomachs when infants. With the head to the side. The other side from last time, alternating. Not the same side all the time.

The human spine is not supposed to be straight. It is curved like the letter S. If you look at your spouse, you will never see him sleep on his back. I think few people sleep flat on their backs.

If your baby doesn't want to, it might not be "because he isn't used to it" but because it's not pleasant.

I don't see any reason to make a baby do something he doesn't like doing, especially when this is the result. You might google "flat head babies" because I have heard of this before, from back-sleeping.

FranticFrummie

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 10:39 pm

DD absolutely HATED tummy time, because it was so frustrating for her. I had to force her into it and try to keep her distracted the whole time to stop her screaming. It took a while, but she eventually got used to it. The sooner you start, the easier it will be.

Dolly Welsh

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 11:09 pm

SIDS I think is now understood to be a ventilation problem.

In a small room, with a closed door, a closed window that does not leak drafts, and no fan, the air is too still.

The baby is breathing out CO2 and it isn't going anywhere. Eventually he is lying under a blanket of his own exhalate. He can't use that. He can't get any good air, because what he breathes out isn't going away from him. That might happen to anybody, but an adult has more lung power, and thrashes around more, creating air movement.

So, one makes sure there is an open door where the baby sleeps, and perhaps a small fan.

Preventing SIDS seems to be the rationale for back-sleeping. The fan seems an easier way to achieve the same thing, of the baby getting good air.

In my day it was required to stomach-sleep lest the kid aspirate his spit-up. They wanted gravity to take the spit-up away from his face, not slide back down for fear of it going into the lungs.

That makes more sense, and there is no crying.

I wonder if some of the exhausted mothers with difficult infant experiences on this forum are having that because of back-sleeping.

zaq

Fri, Jan 30 2015, 12:10 am

Dolly Welsh wrote:

In my day it was required to stomach-sleep lest the kid aspirate his spit-up. They wanted gravity to take the spit-up away from his face, not slide back down for fear of it going into the lungs.

.

We are of the same generation. We all knew you NEVER put an infant to bed on his back. Following that there was a brief "put-the-baby-to-bed-on-his-side" period, which did not last because it is impossible to get an infant to stay on his side. He will roll one way or the other. Baby catalogs featured absurd contraptions that were supposed to keep the baby on his side and were probably more of a strangulation hazard than anything else. Then the pendulum swung to putting babies to sleep on their backs, and somewhere along the line this got misconstrued as "never let a baby lie on his front."

I fully expect the next trend to be putting babies to sleep hanging upside down like bats, or sitting upright.

ROFL

Fri, Jan 30 2015, 3:06 am

I would go to a ped and check it out. It may be a sleeping issue or something bigger. I had one nephew who had to have surgery as his bones in his head fused wrong. It is definitely worth a conversation with a doctor.

yamz

Fri, Jan 30 2015, 8:53 am

Oh my goodness! This really is not that big a deal because your baby is only 4 months old and you have plenty of time to fix this. Don't let everyone scare you. Tummy time is very important, but you don't have to do it for long stretches of time. You can give your baby tummy time 5 minutes at a time at multiple times throughout the day. Also, studies have now shown that those expensive helmets are useless. They do not correct flat head. A baby's head will usually "pop out" on its own when she can sit up and roll around isn't spending all that time lying down. And the head can round out until about the age of two.

imasinger

Fri, Jan 30 2015, 9:22 am

ITA with yamz.

And, Dolly and Zaq, my DGD sleeps only in her carseat, because she screams and won't sleep on her back, and DD (who always slept on her stomach as an nfant, same as all my kids) doesn't want to go AMA and put her on her stomach. She is going to wait until the baby can roll over (probably at around 4 months), then stop with the carseat and put her in the crib on her stomach.