United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Hello to everyone. I first want to say that this website has been a comfort, an inspiration and an educational tool to myself and my family.

I have a question for all you parents. I am the mother of a 13 week old son with right OBPI. We are in PT and he appears to be making weekly gains (small but significant). My son tends to favor a head turn to the unaffected side. He is able to turn it to the left with prompting but does not like to keep it there. Speculation is that he receives visual and sensory input from the left so that's where his head is most comfortable. My question is this: have any of you had this experience and were there any long-term effects? I am concerned with his head shape as he spends about 90% of his time with his head to the left, but I'm also concerned with atrophy of the muscles in his neck. I try EVERYTHING to keep his head in the middle/to the right, but nothing has proven successful yet.

I appreciate any input you have.
Thank you,
Shaily, mother of Jace

Hello. This sounds like the exact thing that happened with my son. It was a little bit of a problem with developmental milestones like crawling and turning over and walking. We saw a PT for that and she just gave us certain exercises to do. She was different than the OT we saw for the injury itself. He is now 17 months old and has no problems whatsoever with his neck or head shape. The most important thing we did was put him on his tummy CONSTANTLY!!!! I can't tell you enough how important that is. We offered toys from both sides and held him in a different arm every time we picked him up. We would also feed him facing him right one time and left the next time, that is very important, too. If you have any more specific questions, post again and I will respond. I can also look for the specific exercises we did. She wrote them down for us, but I don't know if I still have them or not. I remember they were very easy and caused no pain though for once. Good luck.

Hi Shailey, You are right on top of this and that's great. You need to have him turn his head the other way and what I did with my child was to turn the crib in the other direction. I put the music/light box in the crib in the other direction. I put toys in the other direction. With these changes, my child's movements became more balanced. She did have some tightening. It's called torticollis,but with these changes it just went away. Blessings to little Jace.

Matthew had the same problem, he had torticollis. His pt would work on the issue as well. We would make sure to stretch him, we also took him to a chiropractor which seemed to help also.

Cindy

One thing our therapist recommended to us was to move the car seat around and use suction cup toys on the inside of the car window to get him to look around so the neck muscles wouldn't tighten up.

What ever side you notice him not looking to is the side you want to encourage him to look so move the car seat and get some toys at wal-mart. Some things you can hang of the little hooks used to hang coat hangers.

Put the baby mobile on that side of the crib and the mirror or whatever you have to entertain him so he has to look in that direction.

When you have him on the floor to play position your body on that side so he will look towards you.

There are a lot of little everyday things you can do even when you start feeding him you can sit by his side and make him turn his head to get a bite instead of being in front of him. If you give him a bath, position yourself on that side again and talk to him so he turns his head and looks at you.

Don't force yourself to do it all the time. We were told to change sides so neither side would tighten up but take your cues from your child and see what he needs.

My daughter,now 21 months old, had torticollis as a baby too. She also has a ROBPI. Her therapist did neck stretches over several months time to help loosen the muscles in my baby's neck. We did tummy time for hours each day, moved her crib to face the other way, propped her head up with pillows while she was in her carseat and swing, but in the end she did end up developing plagiocephaly (flattened head) and needed a helmet for several months. It was hard to go through, but I'm very glad we did it because she now moves her neck with no problem today and has a very nicely shaped head too. Just keep working with him and hopefully he will start to lift and turn his head more with time. If you ever want to talk to me more about it, please feel free to email me.

Great question! My daughter favors her unaffected side also. I had assumed it was just that she favored one side (as we all tend to when laying down). The advice on this post has been very helpful. I do tummy time daily with Ashleigh and do try to get her to turn her head both ways. I have not done any stretching but with inquire about it with her therapist. Thanks for posting this!

Your PT should be able to tell you if the problem is torticollis. My daughter started pt at 10 days old and the pt recognized the torticollis right away.
We did neck stretches along with our ROM for her arm. I must admit we weren't real good about doing the neck stretches and as a result our daughter developed positional plagiocephaly (flat spot on her head) and had to wear a cranial band. Which is costly and a pain in the butt. Around the age of 6-7 months the neck was no longer an issue and now at almost 3 yrs of age she has no obvious neck problems.
Leslie