Monkey See..Monkey Do

Makenzie absolutely loves her big sister. She is constantly watching Morgan's every move and loves to smile and coo at her big sis. We are always telling Morgan that Makenzie wants to be like her big sis. Well, like her big sis, Makenzie has developed torticollis of the neck. It appears that hers is just positional and it is a mild case, but her pediatrician still referred her for a PT eval. We thankfully were able to get in for an eval quickly, we know how important early intervention is. Makenzie was seen on Wednesday.

The PT we met with was wonderful and provided me with a great refresher course on positioning and stretching that we can be doing with Makenzie to help her neck stretch out and get strong. She also took measurements of Kenzie's head. She will be helping monitor her head to see if she will need to wear a helmet down the road. She said as of right now she will not need one, but we will monitor how her head grows and shapes up over the next couple of months. In the meantime we will be doing PT now with Makenzie weekly as well. We will also be doing at-home-therapy ourselves at every diaper change to stretch and with lots of playtime on her tummy.

We are praying that we caught it early enough that Makenzie won't have any major developmental delays with her gross or fine motor skills.

Here is how Kenzie loves to position herself in her carseat and while sleeping.

One way we are trying to fix that is with this bop.py head support. She doesn't like it, but it helps a lot.

We are also trying to say good bye to her Na.p Nan.ny. We have all LOVED this thing as she has slept so well in it. The first night she slept in it she went 7 hours straight. Typically she does about 5 1/2 to 6 hours and then another 4 hour stretch. This past week she even did three nights in a row of 8 plus hours!! It was amazing, however, she tends to sleep with her head tilted like in the photo above now matter what I do with receiving blanket rolls to try to position her. Also, everything I have read has said to try to limit her time in car seats, bouncers, swings, etc... well the na.p nan.ny pretty much positions her in the same way all those contraptions do so we are trying to go without. Last night was her first night not sleeping in it. She did okay. She slept about 4 hours then woke to eat, slept another 2 1/2 and woke to eat again and then was up about 3 hours later. So not bad, but definitely not as soundly as she had been sleeping. However, I must say that the entire night not once did I wake to find her looking the wrong way or tilting the wrong way so it is a trade off. Plus she was wiggling and squirming like crazy compared to how she sleeps in the na.p na.nny so I have to imagine that all the movement is good for her muscles and motor development. We shall see how it goes. Hopefully she will learn to sleep okay without it and this will aide in helping her get rid of some of the tightness in her neck. Fingers crossed.