Craniosynostosis Causesĭoctors don't know what causes craniosynostosis, which occurs in approximately one out of 2,000 to 2,500 live births. Left untreated, craniosynostosis causes an abnormally shaped head that can limit the brain's growth and cause pressure to develop within the skull. It affects the main suture running from the front to the back of the skull. There are different types of craniosynostosis depending on which sutures fuse, and Ollie had the most common: sagittal synostosis (also known as scaphocephaly from Greek words meaning boat-shaped head). This creates the "soft spots" which give new parents so much anxiety but are crucial for allowing the rapid brain growth which occurs before age 3. Normally, newborns have flexible sutures separating the bones in their skull. Brian took one look at Ollie and asked, "Do you know about craniosynostosis?" What is Craniosynostosis?Ĭraniosynostosis is a birth defect in which one or more sutures on a baby's head close prematurely. I'd waited because I knew that like all doctors, he'd been dragged into the trenches of COVID-19, and I didn't want to bother him. I gave into my gut and FaceTimed my cousin Brian Howard, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Emory. Then one day Ollie was laying on his play mat and his older brother came to lay down next to him, foreheads touching. But as he grew, Ollie's head kept getting bigger, its contours more extreme. She wasn't wrong: many babies are born with misshapen heads because of their position in the womb or the pressure of birth and they self-correct over time. "Babies have weird heads," one doctor told me in a tone meant to be reassuring but which made me feel embarrassed for worrying about my kid's head shape during a pandemic. I asked about it at his first pediatrician's appointment, and then again over the next few weeks, but because of COVID-19 the practice was rotating doctors, and the visits were always brief. I thought he was beautiful, of course, but there was no denying he had a protruding forehead, and his skull was elongated at the front and back, like a torpedo. I'd been so concerned with COVID-19 that it took me a while to notice Ollie's head was oddly shaped. When we made it safely through an unplanned C-section and were cleared to go home from the hospital less than 36 hours after my surgery, I was filled with relief. New York City was averaging hundreds of deaths per day from the virus, and state protocols around labor and delivery were in flux. In the weeks leading up to my son Oliver's birth last April, all I could think of was COVID-19. This article was originally published in.
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