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More Babies Have Flattened Head Syndrome
Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Babies
Ami and Brian Bunch, of Tucson, Ariz., are the proud parents of 10-month-old triplets who are currently sporting head-shaping helmets 23 hours a day, according to a story in the Arizona Daily Star. That's because Colton, Ethan and Hunter have plagiocephaly, or flattened head syndrome. The condition is more common than ever, and recent research in the journal Pediatrics says the main reason is that babies are sleeping on their backs.
But it's also more common in multiples.
"Simply having more children in the womb creates crowding and puts more pressure on the infants' head," study co-author Brian Verrelli, Ph.D., a human population geneticist in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, tells ParentDish in an e-mail. Verrelli's co-author is Jessica Joganic, an undergraduate student at ASU.
And fraternal twins have a higher risk of the syndrome than identical twins.
"Identical twins are more genetically similar than fraternal twins, and thus, because we found that fraternal twins had a higher risk for a flat spot than identical twins, this suggests that environment, and not just genetics, is a bigger factor," Verrelli says.
The Bunch babies began wearing the helmets in October, and will do so until February. The custom-fit helmets, decorated with the babies' nicknames (Maverick, Ice-man and Peanut) apply gentle pressure to reshape the babies' heads.
But not all babies with flattened heads need the helmets: Pediatricians often simply suggest parents give their baby plenty of tummy time during the day and rotate baby's sleeping position at night.
Related: Multiple Births
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
5-06-2010 @ 11:24AM
Nicole said...My son, Bryce, is not a multiple but, was diagnosed with plagiocephaly at 6 months old. As a mother, you inspect every inch of your child and I often thought his skull looked odd. However, the pediatrician kept insisting that we give him more tummy time, which we were already doing. He preferred to lay on his right side and no matter what we did, he would always turn to that side. At his 6 month check-up, his pediatrician, upon seeing his skull, immediately gave us the number to see a specialist for the helmet. His deformity was considered severe and we were told that he would need 2 separate helmets. Thankfully, he responded very well to the therapy and only needed 1 helmet which was taken off at 9 months.The specialists were extremely impressed by his progress. You would never know that my handsome 21 month old ever needed the helmet.
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5-15-2011 @ 12:36PM
lydia said...No where in this article mentions the use of the baby buckets. Infants spend hours on end strapped in these car,shoppingcart, table setting, transport across the parking lot seats. I wonder how many are suffering from failure to thrive due to a lack of human contact.
The use of these 'buckets' can be justified in a hundred ways - 'don't have to wake the baby', 'the baby is used to it so no fuss going in the car seat', 'convenient for him/her when I grocery shop'. But be honest - how many hours a day is the child in this rigid seat.
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