Positional Plagiocephaly

Patrick had his four month appointment on Thursday. He weighs 16 pounds 13 ounces, a quick peek at the baby books tells me that the first two were very close to the same weight at this age. The nurse asked me what we do to calm him down and I was puzzled at this question, when he's upset he needs to eat or sleep or be held, he doesn't have crying jags like Teddy did. He is doing well which means that Mommy is doing much better than she did the first two times!
Paddy's head is flat on one side, though. You can see it in this picture if you mentally draw a line starting at his nose straight through his head. The doctor ordered an x-ray to make sure it wasn't craniostenosis (or something). This is a condition where the plates in his head would fuse together too early requiring surgery. So right after immunizations (and the crying that goes along with that) we went to get an x-ray done on his sweet baby head. He fell asleep right before and had a rude awakening on a cold table with a bright light in his eyes.

We went home and the longer I thougt about it, the more nervous I got, especially because I was unsure as to when I would hear from the doctor. Luckily (after I called twice, not wanting to wait the whole weekend) I got a call from a nurse right after 5pm. She gave him a clear bill of health!! Yay! What a relief! So now he has a "condition" called Positional Plagiocephaly which means I need to be aggressive about sitting him up and placing him on the other side of his head when he sleeps and plays. I recently learned that this is a problem for 1 in 50 babies! Well, we were just relieved that our sweet Paddy didn't need surgery on his head!

So that is our latest news, join us tomorrow (hopefully) for the latest!