The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

04:09 Sep 13 2009
Times Read: 670






My baby is growing up so quickly. We took her for her first physical therapy appointment last week. She will go every week. We have to continue the stretches at home. It's a bit nerve racking to try & stretch an infants neck & head. She has torticollis. The doctors tell me that a long hard labor can sometimes cause this. Also it could've been the way she was situated in the womb. Well the entire pregnancy the child was head down. She dropped about a month before I had her & she was about a week over due. The labor was nothing that I had planned or expected it to be. The labor lasted 46 hours. I really wanted to do it naturally, but in the end it didn't work out that way. At about 40 or 41 hours into it, I finally opted for the epidural. While the epidural worked, it didn't work that great. It knocked the edge off & made the pain more tolerable. The hospital machines for some reason couldn't pick up my contractions, so basically I needed to feel to know when to push. Now I struggle with the fact that maybe if she hadn't been in the birth canal for so long, maybe she wouldn't have troubles now. Torticollis makes the baby favor one side more than the other, which can lead to them laying on one side more & end up causing the head to be miss shapen. It can end up affecting some of the skills due to them favoring the one side more. The child will tend to tilt their head to the side while sitting up, looking at you or being held. In some cases it gets so bad that the child will not turn their head or look in another direction. The doctors seem certain that since we caught it so early that she will not have any troubles. It's just going to take lots of work from us to correct the problem. If we hadn't caught it until 4 months & she was a bit worse off, then a physical therapist would come to our house & perform the therapy, but because we caught it so early, she doesn't qualify. It's scary doing physical therapy on a one month olds neck, I would much rather let a professional. I fear that we are not hard enough or forceful enough because we are so affraid of hurting her.



I love my baby girl & I'm so glad I had her. However I'm so terrified of screwing up at this. I guess all parents feel that way at first. Still I can't help feeling if I had done something different during my pregnancy or during my labor that maybe she wouldn't have troubles now.