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I must say that the little Safe T Sleep™ Headwedge that we used has worked a treat and Ty’s head shape is getting better and better. I used it for every sleep for a couple of months and really worked, so please thank Miriam for that!Kindest regards
Amanda Beets
81 Whitney Street
Blcokhouse Bay
Auckland 1007
Dear Miriam
Happy New Year. I am so sorry I haven’t spoken to you for so long, the time seems to have flown by.
Well, I have finally got around to sending back your questionnaire which I filled out 2 months ago. I also have the measurements of my shrunk Safe T Sleep (after putting it in the dryer) to compare with the new one’s size.
Madison is now 10 months old and her head shape is so improved no one can believe the speed with which it improved. Tristan de Chalain at Middlemore Hospital Plagiocephaly Clinic has now discharged her since she is symmetrical again. I will still keep her on her side all the time when I can but she can now roll over and likes her tummy during the day sleeps. Also she is 95% close to opening up the Safe T Sleep but it is holding firm so far.
The whole situation was so stressful for me and I really got very down about it thinking she would never come right. Thank you so much for all your help and support and thank you for Safe T Sleep without which Madison would look like a book-end forever.
I will be promoting it wherever and whenever I can and am more than happy to help wherever I can especially if other Mothers need someone to talk to like I did. Feel free to give anyone my phone number. If you need any help please feel free to ask me and wherever possible I will be glad to support you and Safe T Sleep.
With a wilful child like Madison my success cam by using the STS with 4 rolled up towels to hold her on her side. I never liked the safety pin as you know, but I didn’t need it if I used the towels. I still use this method now and will for a while longer. I think the leg-piece is a great option but needs to be trialed on a much younger baby as Madison forces her way through and ends up in a tight predicament. However for children not required to lie on their sides (eg: children who naturally turn their heads) it would be brilliant!
Well again thank you so much for everything. I don’t know if I would have had nearly as much success without your support. I hope we can meet again as I sincerely would like to be involved with helping people with the ‘flat-head’ problem, and Safe T Sleep is the ‘key’ to curing it.
Kindest regards,
Anna Pearce
Anna Pearce-Montgomerie ( and Madison Montgomerie)
26 November 2002
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
As a senior consultant in the Craniofacial Clinic at a tertiary referral hospital in New Zealand, I see a large number of babies who present with a condition call Plagiocephaly – a form of flattening or deformity of the skull. Where this is caused by positioning a newborn infant in the same sleeping position day after day, or due to associated torticollis (wry neck). I often advise parents of my patients to position the infant for sleeping so that they are not lying on the flat spot on the skull. This may be difficult to achieve with an active infant, where there is a strong tendency to roll back onto the flat spot. In such cases, I have found that the Safe-T-Sleep sleepwrap device is a safe and very useful adjunct to keeping the infant in a selected sleeping position. During 2002, I ran a trial of this device using it on over 30 babies and infants, who were then observed for more than 300 hours. We found that in more than 90% of cases, the device maintained the selected sleeping position, and in no instance was there any risk to a baby from the device. In my estimation, this is a useful and effective device whose use could safely be encouraged by all health care professionals who take care of babies and neonates.
TRISTAN de CHALAIN FRACS, MBCHB, MSC, FSSA, FRCSC, FRACS
CONSULTANT PLASTIC SURGEON
5 Council Terrace
Northcote Point
North Shore City
New Zealand
To whom it may concern,
Our story starts when our son Ben was only six weeks old. We noticed that he had a dent on the right side of the back of his head. Since birth we had back slept our son, as instructed at the antenatal classes we had attended and attempted to turn his head from side to side with different sleeps. We informed our obstetrician of this irregularity at Ben’s six week check up. We were told not to concern ourselves with this, indeed not to even worry about rotating his head from side to side as it would come right over time. We took this advice on board, but deep down we were not happy, the dent was getting worse right in front of our eyes.
We carried on until we went to the Plunket nurse for Bens three moth check, again we mentioned the dent and the Plunket nurse said that it was of concern, she advised us to visit our G.P. so off we went. He also agreed that Bens head was quite misshapen and that he favoured his right side when he was on his back, and yes something needed to be done, but unfortunately he did not know where to send us for help.
We were now finally in the position of two health professionals agreeing that something needed to be done about Ben’s head shape, but nobody knew where to send us to get help. By this stage we had become obsessed with our sons head shape, so after many phone calls we managed to find; (a) a Neuro developmental therapist (Ros Saffer from Child Development Services) and (b) a G.P. (Dr M Stone) that actually knew all about this condition and referred us to a specialist in the field.
After a months wait to get into the specialist (Dr T. de Chalain) we were finally given a name for our sons dent – Positional Plagiocephaly. It can be caused or exacerbated by the baby always returning their head to the same side when placed to sleep on their back. This puts pressure on the same spot repeatedly and therefore causes the head to become dented, the ears to become misaligned and the forehead to bulge, all at varying degrees depending on when it was picked up. Also associated with this can be torticollis (tightening of neck muscles due to only turning/stretching the head predominantly in one direction).
With this diagnosis in firstly came the reassurance that it was not affecting Bens brain function and secondly we were also instructed to keep him off the dented part of his head continuously. This in theory sounds easy, but by this stage Ben was almost 5 months old and retraining him to sleep on his side was not going to be easy. We struggled for weeks and Ben struggled against us, until we finally called Miriam Rutherford, creator of Safe T Sleep.
We were able to visit with Miriam in her home and when we met her we found that she had a wealth of knowledge of Plagiocephaly and had helped many families deal with repositioning their babies. She showed us numerous ways to use the Safe T Sleep effectively and gave us much needed encouragement and support to persist with our endeavours. From that night on, after our visit with Miriam and with a lot of love and encouragement Ben slept blissfully on his side.
We also now have the Neuro development therapist visit us every two weeks or so to keep an eye on Ben’s developmental progress, which can be delayed due to not being on his back as much as other babies, and also to teach us exercises to loosen any tight neck muscles which can become a problem with this condition. Ben is now 6.5 months and slowly we are starting to see changes in his head shape. It seems that we had to go to extraordinary lengths to get this far, all because we slept our baby on his back. If only from the beginning we could have known how important to change sleep positions (i.e. Rt side sleep/back sleep/Lft side sleep) and/or if only the first contact health professionals we were in touch with had had better knowledge of what appears to be a very common problem, we would not have had to go through this ordeal.
In writing this we hope that we will at least be able to inform one parent/nurse/doctor about this problem to avoid the absolute agony and frustration we had to endure, after all we only want what’s best for our babies. Right?
Yours faithfully,
Julie and Alun Rees-Williams (Parents to Ben)
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