Hi! I do have experience with this with DS1 and wanted to tell our story as the cause of his plagiocephaly was a bit more unusual and is something to consider if you can’t get it sorted through usual means.
I’ll try to be brief. From birth DS1 tilted his head towards his right shoulder and by the time he was 5 weeks old one side of his head at the back and side was noticeably flat. I took him to the midwife, doctor and his well child nurse about it and was told over and over again that I didn’t need to do anything about it as the head shape issues would resolve on their own and to just to go in and turn his head the other way when he was sleeping.
Long story short, his plagiocephaly did start getting better around the time he was 6 months old and by the time he was 1 it was much reduced. However he was still tilting his head. It took until he was 3 for us to get a diagnosis on why. He went through physio for his neck and whilst this did help him understand where the ‘middle’ was, i.e. his neck muscles were operating absolutely fine, he was still tilting his head. Finally we got our GP to refer him to an eye surgeon who took one look at him and said the reason he’d been tilting his head since birth was because one of his eyes had trouble looking up and down - one of the eye muscles was too tight - so he had to tilt his head to be able to see properly. So he had eye surgery in January this year to weaken the eye muscle and low and behold - head tilt much reduced and pretty much unnoticeable. He’s still under specialist care for his eyes and has at least one more appointment to figure out if it’s as good as it’s going to get or if they need to go in again.
Just wanted to raise awareness that plagiocephaly and torticollis can have a cause other than something muscular. So if your baby is still having problems after going through physio, it is a good idea to get their eyes checked.
But in regards to the head shape issue, which is what people tend to be mostly concerned about - my son's head is now almost completely normally shaped despite being wonky as a baby. He has a residual very slight flat spot behind one ear but you can’t tell it’s there. I know it’s there, because I’m his mum, but no other person under the sun has ever noticed it. Their hair hides everything and the orthopaedic surgeon he saw about his neck and head earlier this year said their skulls keep changing until age 7 and that it’ll basically be gone by then. I can vouch for the fact that his head it still changing and I do believe by age 7 that you’ll never be able to tell it was there.
So basically, even if you do nothing about his head shape except treat his torticollis, he will end up with a normally shaped head. No one has a completely symmetrical head anyway, and we’ve now been putting babies to sleep on their backs for a whole generation and you don’t see adults walking around with strangely shaped heads, do you?
So stress less! Treat the torticollis and the head shape will sort itself out.
I wouldn’t go for a helmet. In NZ these are not even mentioned as an option and no one seems worse for it!
