All Too Easy

Although there's no official diagnosis, it's clear that Evie has torticollis, just like Henry did.  We noticed that her head tilts toward her left shoulder and she prefers turning her head over her right, which is a significant indication.

For Henry, it took an early intervention specialist at his daycare last year to notice it and to make the suggestion that we bring it up with our pediatrician (who never noticed).  We did so, and our pediatrician subsequently wrote a prescription for a referral to a physical therapist.  The therapy lasted about two and a half months, going from three times a week to eventually once a week as Henry's neck got stronger and more straight.

Since we're familiar with the symptoms of torticollis, we noticed it in Evie right away.  Which means we're going to have to do the same exercises with her that we had to do with Henry last year.

Because things have been so simple and easy so far that we just needed something else to worry about.

On a more serious note, here's the difference.  The left picture shows Henry's torticollis before therapy, and the right picture is after several weeks (though only soon after therapy ended and before he gained even more strength and flexibility in his neck to even out his head position).

Note not just the tilt of his head, but the shape of his jawline.  The tilt of the head flattened his face on the left side, and got to the point where even the shape of his eye was affected.  You can still see remnants of that misshapenness in the "after" photo, where his left eye seems narrower.

Today, his face is much more rounded, but if you look very closely, you can see that his left eye is still narrower than his right.

This is an awesome photo of him after he just woke up.  He wasn't very thrilled with me.

So we'll have to do a bunch of manipulation with Evie's head and neck now.  Whether we need to go to a physical therapist for her for this, I don't know.  But the 3-a-week is probably going to have to start, because we didn't have enough to worry about already.