buckets and beds and very flat heads

Buckets and Beds and Very Flat Heads

Plagiocephaly. Sounds medical! It’s the formal name for “flat head syndrome,” which doesn’t sound any nicer. Those flat heads may be linked to the “Back to Sleep” campaign that has us putting babies to bed on their backs… but it probably has much more to do with buckets.

Read up on flat head syndrome, and you’ll find encouragement to give baby more “tummy time,” as if the only two positions a baby can assume are on his back and on his front. But babies are people, just like the rest of us, and their favorite position is usually vertical!

How can a baby sit up? He’s just a baby! Ah, babies are built not for beds or baby carriers or tummy time, but for being held. You’ll notice that your instinct, when your baby cries, is to pick him up and hold him – vertically – against your chest or shoulder. That’s a very old instinct that puts your baby in a position of control for finding his way to his food source! He can get pretty wriggly in that position, as if he’s scootching down toward your breast. Well, that’s exactly what he’s doing, so feel free to help him on his trip. He’s doing it because he feels comfortable and controlled. He feels… vertical!

A car seat makes a baby vertical too, and they often find it calming as a result. But remember what it’s doing to the backs of their heads, hour after hour after hour. The baby who moves from bed to bucket to bed to bucket is the baby whose head may not develop normally. After all, we spent eons with neither beds nor buckets. Just cozy arms, simple slings, mothers and babies curled together at night – positions that changed frequently all day and all night. Keep your baby out of those modern buckets and cribs, and his head should develop just fine.

Premature babies are especially susceptible to side-to-side head flattening, because their skulls are more moldable at birth. The premature baby who spends much of his time on his mother’s chest in Kangaroo Care or virtually all of his time there in Kangaroo Mother Care is unlikely to have that telltale narrow head as he gets older. Even the littlest ones need holding; maybe they need it the most!

What about SIDS concerns? It’s true that babies on their backs are at far lower risk. But the baby who sleeps with his mother, as babies always have, has the added advantage of frequent movement – on his side to nurse, on his back to snooze, never on his stomach, moving freely as they move through the hours together. It’s a dynamic, healthy night of frequent position changes that leaves everyone happier and better rested, so long as simple common-sense safety issues are addressed.

So go ahead. Carry your baby. Sleep with him. There’s no such thing as too much togetherness. It’s what you’re both built for, emotionally, physically, physiologically. And if you become a baby holder, you’ll never have to learn how to spell plagiocephaly!