SleepCurve Mattresses – the essential weapon for preventing Flat head Syndrome
When the time comes to depart the hospital clutching your newborn baby you will have probably been sat down by a midwife and had the bloody fear of God instilled into you about the various dangers lurking around your homes waiting for them.
If you spent a week in hospital navigating the various pitfalls of the NHS then you would sell your soul to Satan just to get out. Sitting there nodding blankly whilst being patronised by a midwife half your age is the easy bit. The various leaflets they hand you about what not to do make for dark and scary reading.
The fact is these leaflets are responsible for saving the lives of so many babies. One leaflet you will get is for the Foundation for the Study on Infant Death’s (FSID) ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign. This was launched to bring awareness to research that proved there were strong links between cot death and the position babies are placed in to sleep.
Parents have been encouraged for some time to place babies at the foot of the cot, and on their backs. This stops babies wriggling down under the covers, overheating or smothering. This successful campaign has been producing fantastic results and the number of cot death cases has significantly decreased as a result.
The success of the ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign has been saving the lives of babies but has been producing medical conditions specific to the advice given. The pros of laying your baby on their back far out weighs the cons, but there are problems with babies spending so much time on their backs.
Positional Plagiocephaly is a condition that has really been hitting the headlines in recent months. This is a condition where a newborn baby develops a flat section of skull from the pressures of being constantly on their back. Baby’s skulls are very soft and can mould easily. Sometimes this is very obviously at the back of the head. Some babies develop a liking for sleeping with their head to one particular side and may end up with one side of their head flat instead.
Shockingly, brachycephaly or plagiocephaly is considered to be a cosmetic issue and there are only two places that treat babies on the NHS that develop this condition one of which is in Bristol. Even so, there are restrictions on treatment and it is only applicable to specifically aged babies.
Treatment otherwise is down to a helmet that the parents must pay for themselves and costs around £2000. The child spends up to 23 hours a day in this helmet. No parent would want to resort to this and is hardly likely to be used for minor cosmetic enhancements.
NHS Direct say of Positional plagiocephaly: “is quite common and doesn’t cause any health problems. Although the shape of the head may become worse in the first few months of life, it normally corrects itself by the time the child has reached a year old.”
Though as above official British medical advice is that Plagiocephaly causes no health problems, some medical research is finding links between it and problems with later development with eating and chewing due to facial abnormalities, potential difficulty with vision needing corrective surgery and head shape abnormalities causing problems with the joint that operates the jaw
One answer to cutting the risk of flat head syndrome is to look carefully at your choice of mattress when buying for your new baby. The conventional options are a Moses basket and then a cot.
Some parents rubbish Moses baskets because babies grow out of them so quickly. They are however, highly useful items. They will keep your baby warm and snug and you can carry them around the house not having to disturb your baby (if you are lucky enough to have one that does actually sleep). You can also place the Moses basket in the cot at night. A cot can be a dauntingly huge space for a tiny baby to be in alone and a Moses basket can be a good cot divider.
A traditional cot comes with a varying range of mattresses, and it is highly recommended that you always get a new mattress for each new baby.
The SleepCurve mattress is not your conventional baby mattress. It is designed for with cutting down positional plagiocephaly as its primary agenda.
Its creator is paediatric cranial osteopath Philip Owen, who has spent the last 20 years of his career treating the skulls and spines of young babies. Philip felt that conventional cot mattresses were not adequate for modern day baby care, particularly now that babies must be put to sleep on their backs.
The mattress can be used in both cots and Moses baskets. It has a unique shape that mimics the way a parent would hold and cradle their child with the pressure off of the back of the head. It has a special sculpted head area that baby’s heads fit naturally into and relieves the pressure from the skull. It is also well ventilated to stop a baby from overheating. It complies with all relevant British Safety Standards for baby mattresses and is manufactured in the UK by a leading supplier of mattresses to the NHS.
For more information on the SleepCurve mattress go to: