Helping Your Baby With Torticollis

Abstract

Torticollis is another name for “twisted neck.” It sounds like “tōr’ti-kol’is” when you say it out loud. Sometimes babies are born with their necks twisted more to one side than the other. Other times this can happen after birth. In either case, the neck muscle on one side is tighter or shorter than usual. (It is not a bone problem. Your baby’s bones are normal.) We don’t really know for sure why some babies have torticollis. It can happen if a baby is lying a certain way when he is inside his mother. Or it can happen during birth. The cause might be uneven pressure on the neck muscles while baby is being born. A newer idea is that sometimes torticollis happens from babies lying on their backs a lot. In this position some babies don’t move much. This may cause torticollis and sometimes a flat head (“plagiocephaly”). We know that for safe sleep it is important to put babies to sleep on their backs. So while awake, babies should be in other positions: on their stomach, on their sides or upright.