To the left, to the left

We took Campbell in for her first physical therapy appointment on Wednesday, and the doc seconded the diagnosis of torticollis. To try and help stretch out and lengthen the muscles on the left side of her neck, we have to do daily exercises, including pulling her head to the side so her right ear touches her right shoulder and pushing her chin to make her look left. 3-4 times a day, 5 reps, holding 5 secs each time. We also need to maximize her tummy time, lay her on her left side and place rolled up blankets on either side of her head in the car seat and swing to encourage her to look over her midline. The doc's assessment was that her head is pretty asymmetrical - she got a 13/15, with 15 being the most asymmetrical. The back right side is flattened out, and if you look at her down from the top, you can see the distinct difference in the distance from her eyebrow to hairline on the left and right sides.

Right now, we're doing the exercises about 30 mins after every meal (except the 4 am feeding - I'm not putting either one of us through that, and besides, she'll be dropping that feeding any day now, right?). She'll also go to physical therapy once a week, at least until the end of July. Then the doc will decide the next steps. It's going to get a little harder after I go back to work and she starts day care. We can ask them to try and help - place toys to her left, carry her on the right shoulder to encourage her to look left... but, they'll have other kids to watch and likely won't have time to do her stretches. In other news, she's up to taking 4 oz. of formula at each feeding, and we've transitioned her completely to milk-based formula. (We started her on soy b/c when we were supplementing the breast milk, she threw up the first couple of milk-based bottles we gave her, but I think we were just overfilling her at that time...) There's nothing particularly bad about the soy based formula, but it's like 47% corn syrup, and that just seemed wrong to me.

Only one week left of maternity leave. It will be nice to be back in the 'real world', but it's going to be very difficult to turn her care over to someone else, and I really will miss just being able to see her and hold her all day.