High Muscle Tone | Imamother

mumsy23

Thu, Aug 14 2008, 3:05 pm

My son who is 3.75 months old has just been diagnosed with plagiocephaly and brachiocephaly (flat head) and mild torticollis. On my own I noticed that he is has a little too much tone in his body and I asked a PT to look at him. She said that nothing jumps out at her but he is a bit stiff and that I should get him evaluated.

Does anybody here ever have a problem with hypertonia with their baby? And more importantly has anybody here have it in combination with plagiocephaly or torticollis or both?

As you can guess I am nervous and stressed out about the whole thing and would appreciate speaking to someone who has been there.

Thanks!

Strudel

Thu, Aug 14 2008, 6:29 pm

I've treated babies with both. Is your son a premature?

Keep seeing the pt, as she will show you how to position your baby and stretching exercises for his neck. As for the muscle tone, he's still very little, which might be why it's difficult to fully evaluate his tone right now.

Are you going to have him fitted with a helmet for the plagiocephaly?

montrealmommy

Thu, Aug 14 2008, 6:53 pm

hypo = low
hyper = high

my son had a weird combo - he had hypotonic core muscles and hypertonic extremities (ex. he couldn't roll over until almost 11 mo, but could hand on to us like a monkey with his arms and legs from about 6mo, or - he could walk 2+ miles when he was 23 mo. but couldn't do stairs until he was over 3 yrs, and many more things)

what really helped is working with a pt who really understood how to help me help him. B"H he has outgrown/improved greatly since then and is now 4.5 and his hyper-hypo tonicity are not quite as drastic nor as noticable.

I do not know about the other conditions from personal experience with my kids, but I have had torticollis and in many cases (mine included) it can be improved or 'gotten rid of' with consistancy and good therapy (mild and non-invasive). When I am lazy or do repeated activities in a certain way it can begin to creap back - but I developped it in childhood and didn't get treated until adolescnce which I think has a lot to do with that.

Feel free to pm me for more.

mumsy23

Fri, Aug 15 2008, 10:25 am

midwest wrote:

He is going to get a helmet. I thought that 3 months may be too young to evaluate him for hypertonia since some of the reflexes may still be present. The problem I'm having now is I can't find a PT is comfortable with such a young baby. I did get the EI rout started but I don't want to wait weeks to get this eval. Do you think I am being to aggressive? Should I just wait until he is a little older?

Strudel

Fri, Aug 15 2008, 11:52 am

IMO, I'd get the eval done. If you're on a waiting list, it might be a few weeks until he's seen, so many of the early reflexes might have stopped, he'll be a bit older and easier to eval.