Our turtle has torticollis

Willa reminds me of different kinds of animals at different times. A turtle when she scrunches and stretches her neck. A kitten for her snuggly sleep habits. Etc. Anyways...

At her two week Dr appointment I mentioned that she gets hiccups a lot, and also that she turns her neck to the left but not often to the right. She immediately diagnosed it as torticollis and referred me to a local chiropractor who specializes in infants and children.

It ends up I get kuddos for observing it this soon, because cases that are caught & treated earliest usually respond the quickest to treatment. It also ends up, bizarrely enough, that the hiccups are related to the torticollis!

We had our first chiropractor appointment yesterday and I found it pretty fascinating. By gently touching Willa's body, she could tell so much! She is the one who brought up the subject of hiccups, and said that  frequent hiccups are associated with the stiff muscles of torticollis. As she gets treatment they should become much less frequent. I had also observed, but not brought up, that Willa almost always has her fists clenched instead of her fingers open. This, as well, is associated with stiff muscles and will reduce over treatment. Willa's pelvis and spine seem fine, as well as her shoulders. She is tight in her abdomen, on the side of her neck, the back of the neck a bit and she has tightness & a small  indentation on both sides of her face if you follow the eyebrows back to the hairline. This last spot should be worked on gently both for health/flexibility and for cosmetic reasons (so she can have a symmetrical head). We want to start work gently on all these spots so her neck can have normal flexibility and so she can get strong muscles in all areas before she is missing milestones on things like crawling. A precursor to crawling is getting strong muscles through tummy time, and she will not have uniform strong muscles if her head always goes to the one side. Plus we don't want her to get a flat spot that would then potentially need a helmet to protect & correct!