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Baby has a flat head

22 replies

K2012 · 22/08/2022 05:30

FTM - do not judge

Baby is 3 months. Noticed the last few weeks that his head is a bit flat, I thought it’d get better/change but hasn’t so what do I do now?

I’ve seen this on Boots www.boots.com/babymoov-lovenest-plus-fresh-smokey-10239776

but can the shape change now or is it too late? What do I do? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Please advice. Thank you in advance

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SushiSuave · 22/08/2022 05:33

It's definitely not too late for head shape to change, you just need to give baby more tummy time/ lie baby cheat to cheat with you to prevent them lying on the back of their head constantly.

SushiSuave · 22/08/2022 05:34

That should say chest to chest

pinheadlarry · 22/08/2022 05:45

Don't worry if its just a little bit , it will go away, my daughters looked slightly flat around that age but its definitely not now🙂 .. check with thr go or health visitor to double check
Baby's heads are a bit like putty because the skulls not hard yet,
Just don't let him lie down too long on his back and do lots of tummy time when he's awake and carry him around a lot in your arms until he can crawl
Dont let him spend more than 2 hours in the same position on his back because I think that's how baby's get flat head

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MrsH497 · 22/08/2022 05:47

K2012 · 22/08/2022 05:30

FTM - do not judge

Baby is 3 months. Noticed the last few weeks that his head is a bit flat, I thought it’d get better/change but hasn’t so what do I do now?

I’ve seen this on Boots www.boots.com/babymoov-lovenest-plus-fresh-smokey-10239776

but can the shape change now or is it too late? What do I do? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Please advice. Thank you in advance

Just do tummy time with baby. Don't buy anything like that it's not safe and not necessary

K2012 · 22/08/2022 05:50

Thank you everyone for the advice 👍🏻

Baby doesn’t really like tummy time but will try more now and chest to chest. We do carry him around a lot and during the day his naps aren’t long only between 15-60 minutes

Is there any point in buying that pillow?

OP posts:
NewtoHolland · 22/08/2022 06:08

Take to the health visitor for advice as they can advise whether to refer for assessment and a helmet if there is anything going on like scaphlocephaly. Lots of babies do get a flatter back of the head when very small/, lots of holding/ tummytime and side lying for play should help. Pillows I think are a Sid's risk nut can check with your health visitor.

SushiSuave · 22/08/2022 06:27

I have never met a baby that does particularly like tummy time at that age, but it's important to do.

K2012 · 22/08/2022 09:34

Thanks. I will call the health visitor today.

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Speedyshoes · 22/08/2022 10:30

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Mol1628 · 22/08/2022 10:33

I would get a baby carrier / sling and use that as much as possible rather than the pram/ playmat when at home etc

Speedyshoes · 22/08/2022 10:33

Tummy time is definitely important for overall development of strength and motor control, but all the tummy time in the world won't round out a flat head, because he is flattening at night when he sleeps. So I agree that tummy time is great, but if you want to change the shape of his head and/or prevent it getting any worse (studies show development of flattening peaks at around 4 months) it isn't going to get you anywhere particularly. A Helmet will cost you about £2800 so ideally you would want to avoid that.

Speedyshoes · 22/08/2022 16:52

@pinheadlarry I just wanted to (politely!) correct you on something. Babies heads are not "like putty". They are not soft, they are made of bone! The reason they flatten is due to two factors - fast growth, and reduced movement. Babies heads grow extremely quickly in the first 4 months of life, to accomodate their rapidly expanding brains. As many as 25% of babies are born with some degree of torticollis. In some, this is really mild and resolves in the first week or so of life. But other babies have persistent torticollis and do not turn their heads both ways. This constant positional preference results in the same side of the head being in contact with the mattress/floor/whatever when the baby is lying on their back. This constant contact restricts growth in the area of contact. The head still grows, but not where it contacts the mattress - the growth is redirected to the other side. This is what causes the flat spot. Think of a pumpkin - where a pumpkin grows up against an unyielding surface (a wall/ another pumpkin/ the floor) is becomes flat. A pumpkin is no more "putty-like" than a skull.

You were therefore correct that the baby will flatten when in one position for long periods... but what is your advice for night time? This is why the advice to increase tummy time actually does nothing to improve the flat spot.

pinkerseal · 22/08/2022 17:00

I took my dd for a couple of cranial osteopathy sessions at 8 weeks as I'd noticed that she only turned her head one way and was developing a flat patch. It made an immediate difference and she could turn her head after that one session. I don't think we went more than twice, and her ability to turn her head both ways was fine after that. It was a very, very gentle treatment, but it definitely worked (and she didn't end up with a flat head - she's 15 now!).

pinheadlarry · 22/08/2022 17:10

😂thank you for educating me, you taught me something today!
I thought the advice was to turn the babys head position yourself , I'm sure that's what I did, though I can't remember if my dd was turning her head herself, she probably was!
And just so people don't think I'm a complete dunce , no I don't think that baby's heads are made of putty, I just thought it was a "neat" comparison ..

Speedyshoes · 22/08/2022 18:30

I didn't mean to offend - I didn't think you literally thought babies head were like plasticine, and you are far from the only one who thinks this is how baby's heads flatten, but the literature is really clear. I'm quite passionate about educating other parents, too.

Yes, advice is to turn baby's head to the other side. This works for the 60% of babies who were not in danger of flattening in the first place. But for a baby with significant torticollis, turning the other way is physically impossible. Every parent who has been through Physiotherapy for their child's torticollis will tell you, it hurts them to turn their heads. You have to be really gentle with the stretching, and they often fight it. So repositioning - the dogma of the last 30 years - just does not work. This is why parents end up helmeting their babies - you can bet your life they tried repositioning prior to shelling out £2800! If they are asleep and you turn their heads they wake up. Or they just turn it back again. I know a woman whose mother moved in with them and stayed up overnight, all night every night, with a timer, turning the baby's head back to the non flattening side every 15 minutes. It didn't work, she flattened anyway.

The other issue is that if significant flattening is present, repositioning doesn't work to correct the asymmetry. In order to correct one side of "no growth", and one side of "overgrowth", we now need to reduce growth on the overgrown side and direct it to the flat side. This is how helmets work. It is also how The Perfect Noggin works - and the beauty of the PN is that even if the torticollis is not yet resolved, the baby cannot flatten, because there are no flat surfaces; the occipital bone sits in an anatomically correct contour.

The Back to Sleep campaign was started in the late 80s and for the last 30 years, the incidence of cranial asymmetry has remained unchanged. I think at this point it ought to be concluded that as a strategy, it remains somewhat lacking.

Speedyshoes · 22/08/2022 18:31

Sorry I meant to tag @pinheadlarry

Battybonkers · 22/08/2022 18:36

Hi DD had a flat head. I was super stressed about it (FTM too) I think the flat spot was super comfy as when I turned her head it always needed back on the flat spot so got worse and worse. HV, GP and any one else who would listen told me not to worry. I bought a special sushi on which I then got rid of as I was worried about SIDS and looked into getting a weird helmet thing but decided it was over kill. She now has a lovely shaped head and turns out everyone telling me not to worry was right!

Speedyshoes · 22/08/2022 19:32

It wasn't so much that the flat spot was comfy, it's that she had torticollis, so having her head turned that way was comfortable (or rather the other way was uncomfortable).
The vast majority of cranial asymmetry becomes unnoticeable once the child is grown, because we do not look down on the top of a teenager or other adults head. For some parents though, that is too long to wait.

70billionthnamechange · 22/08/2022 20:01

To make you worry less.. mine was the same. By 2 months it had gone. Not even sure why or how but it's probs nothing to worry about. Sorry I didn't read full thread so if there's more info that I've missed I apologise. Just wanted to jump on to tell you its not always permanent

pinheadlarry · 22/08/2022 20:06

Oh no you didn't offend me, thank you for sharing,

I didn't know about any of this, its very interesting. I wondered about the back to sleep thing too, if back sleeping caused the flat heads then wouldnt we see an increase ??
i wonder is it genetics that make your baby more likely to get flat head ...

Fieldings15 · 22/08/2022 20:20

My son had a flat head on one side which I also noticed at 3 months (also first baby). I got obsessed with repositioning but it didn’t really do anything (as others have said, it’s nights that’s the main issue I think). I considered one of those pillows too but was worried about SIDS. In the end at 8 months when it was still looking pretty flat we went down the helmet route, and I’m glad we did. At 3 years old he still has a small flat bit but it’s not noticeable to others. However it’s enough that a cycle helmet won’t sit straight and I think it would be a lot worse if we hadn’t got the helmet when we did. It was expensive though, about 2k at the time. However I think most of the providers will do a free consultation to assess the severity at the beginning and you can then choose to progress with the helmet if you want to. If I were you I would monitor and reposition for the next 2-3 months and then reconsider if a helmet might be needed. Take photos (eg from side/top down of head) so you can see if things are getting better or worse. I don’t know about the perfect noggin others have mentioned as I don’t think that was around at the time I was looking but that might be worth investigating too, hope this helps! Also don’t beat yourself up about it, these things happen so easily!

Speedyshoes · 23/08/2022 20:34

@pinheadlarry

Oh good. Its hard to know with written word isn't it?!

That's a great question. The simple answer is yes, it has caused an increase. Prior to the back to sleep campaign, the average western Cephalic Index (the ratio of width to length of the skull) was around 0.78; it is now 0.83. A CI of 0.83 doesn't look flat at all, far from it, but there has been a measurable change. Also, of course, it had a profound impact on reducing the incidence of SIDS (major plus!).

Head flattening isn't genetic in the simple sense of it being purely a heritable trait. It's environmental. But there are traits which could predispose to flattening which are heritable. For example, having a larger than average (therefore heavier) head. And some women have multiple babies who all have torticollis, and hence all flatten. Again it wouldn't be a single gene or anything, but if a couple had babies on the larger side, and mum might have physical attributes that resulted in them being restricted in utero, then there is sort of a genetic component at play.

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