Torticollis and Physical Therapy for Kinley

I mentioned in a post a few months back that Kinley has a preference for turning her head to one side. The right to be exact. She likes to look to her right side and when she turns to her left, she keeps her chin tucked down. It's called torticollis and she got it from positioning during my pregnancy.

This is Kinley:

This is how Kinley feels about turning her head to the left. And an example of how she likes to sit. With her head turned to the right and tilted slightly down:

If you look at the picture below, some of the symptoms of torticollis are present. As a result of her right sided preference, she has a little flat spot on the back right side of her head. It is also pushing her right ear forward and resulting in an irregular distribution of the fat in her cheeks. So in the picture, you can see her right cheek (your left) is a little bigger looking:

At her 2 month appointment, right before Christmas, our pediatrician put in an order for physical therapy. I asked around a few months ago for a good pediatric physical therapy place in town because I had 2 friends who had kids who needed some therapy. My co-worker's wife works at a place in Henderson call Children's Therapy Center. It's a bit of a hike (about 45 min to get there) but it's worth it to see a therapist that I trust.

They are teaching us exercises to stretch her sternocleidomastoid muscles, anterior scalenes, and trapezius muscles. And how to strengthen her back muscles, which will help her relax and stretch out her neck.

Here is Kinley in PT with her therapist Leslie:

And she got her neck taped last week to assist in engaging muscles to prevent the head tilt:

Leslie says that she is doing better but her neck still feels a little "rope-y," as in the muscles feel like ropes and are tight. We've been going once a week for about a month and are expected to be able to start going once every other week soon. We are good at doing our homework. She has to do little baby sit ups, stretch some, sit up while we rub her muscles, and do lots of tummy time to strengthen her back and extensor muscles for her neck.