Hey everybody, thanks so much for your words and you are right! I know this sleep thing has a lot to do with her nature, because she does wake happy most of the time, even if it's been a short nap. She's not a crying mess most of the time, but can get cranky from being tired. I am trying so hard to enjoy her for who she is. I make sure that no matter how awful that nap was, I greet her smile with a big smile in return. Part of my depression stems for that disappointment of not just being free to enjoy her in every aspect, but being a slave to sleep deprivation. I don't want to think about it as much as I do, and I would like to relax and go with the flow. I know many moms do. Maybe it is simply not in MY nature to do so. I am very type A, and like to have some consistency, but find it very hard to arrange that now.
As for doing EASY and the tummy time, I would love to feed her first thing. It was working so well in the beginning, and offered up the same consistency over and over. The tummy time period before food now is part of the routine and I think she is used to it, but I do think that if I were able to do EASY by the book, things might go a little easier. I keep waiting for her to be rolling over both ways proficiently, and sitting up. Once that happens, then I don't have to do "prescribed" tummy time. And hopefully she will be done with PT too.
Kim, as for torticollis, it is very treatable. How old is your son, by the way? And it's not a disease, simply a condition that babies who are very large or have been wedged into a certain position for a while in utero can have. Sometimes neither of those are present and it just happens. There is an entire website devoted to it, called torticolliskids.org. But to give you a quick summary, it is a shortening (or tightening) of one side of the sternocleidomastoid muscle in the neck. We have this muscle on both sides of our neck. Therefore, when one side is short or tight, the other side becomes loose and not strong. Hence, the torticollis babies will tilt their heads to one side, and turn their heads to the other side only. My dd could (or would) only turn her head to the left, and when sitting up you could see that her head actually tilted right ear to right shoulder. If you look at your ds's pics, you can probably see a tilt to one side or the other. Another big indicator of torticollis is the baby hates tummy time and has a lot of difficulty with it. I didn't force tummy time because I didn't think it was too important. Little did I know.
So the treatment prescribed was weekly and now bi weekly physical therapy. And at home stretches and TUMMY TIME! There are two stretches we do, one is rotation. We rotate her head in the opposite direction from where she likes to be. She likes left, we go right. At first she resisted because the muscle was tight. But once it loosened up, she was fine. The other stretch is to tilt her head in the opposite direction. We do left ear to left shoulder. We do these stretches 4-6 times a day, 3x each holding for 30 seconds. You will learn many silly songs and faces to keep him from fussing but it's worth it. These exercises go on until they are crawling and sitting on their own. The reason is because even if you stretch them out now, once their neck starts to grow and they need to use even more muscle strength to do things, they can revert to tilting again.
First thing you can do Kim, is change all of his toys to the side he does not prefer. All our toys are on Rachel's right side. When riding in the car (if anyone sits next to him) sit on his "bad" side. When in the stroller, use a burp cloth to prop his head in the other direction. Same with the bouncy seat.
Oh yeah, and dd did have flattening on her left side, because she would only sleep on that side. Now, she's evenly flat and her bald spot has moved all the way to the right. If your son is younger than 1 year, usually none of the flattening is permanent. Once their little brains grow and you treat the torticollis, it all evens out. Sometimes a helmet is necessary, but again, it's not something you need to worry about now and if it does happen, paint it with football colors and everyone will think it's cool.
PM me and I can give you a whole slew of suggestions on pretty much anything related to this. But don't freak out. It's not the end of the world and will only be for a short time.
Ladies, thanks again so much for your support. My goal today is to enjoy every minute I spend with Rachel, no matter what!! Of course I am having my wisdom teeth pulled in two hours, so that will be quite a challenge!