Update on the boys

Anderson James

Jake Thomas

Anderson and Jake have been busy growing lots of teeth the past week. Both of them seem to have 3-4 tooties on their way. Today we took them to Children's Hospital to for their 6 week check-up with the cranial/facial specialist. It's been a week since Anderson stopped wearing the helmet and the dr. confirmed today that he is good to go. She said he had "beautiful results" and she will check in on him when he turns one but it looks like his misshapen head days are behind him.

Jake will continue to wear his cranial remolding orthosis. Oddly his head now measures symmetrical but looking at the shape it is easy to see he still needs some fine tuning. He has come a long way from where he started so we are very happy about that. We got a peek at the x-rays taken of his skull before the helmet and what a difference! We couldn't believe how severely flattened his head was just 3 months ago, he looks great now. We are proud of them both! It has not been an easy task for them to wear them 23 hours a day, during naps, sleeping at night and sweating like little hot boxes when we take them outside. They are such sweet and cooperative babies.

Unfortunately Jake's torticollis (tight neck muscle causing head tilt) has not been improving despite two days a week of physical therapy. We have decided to step it up a notch and take him to the chiropractor twice a week as well. We have a wonderful chiropractor that has lots of experience with infants so we are hopeful that she will be able to help improve Jake's condition. The dr. said there are some other treatments to consider as he gets closer to a year old but we are trying to avoid those if possible. A neck brace is one of them and a new form of treatment for Torticollis is BOTOX injections into the neck muscle. Neither of those treatments sound desirable to Kevin and I so before that time comes Kevin and I want to do everything we can for Jake to avoid that.