welcome back this is our third now sit down sunday yeah sunday q a um where we're answering
your questions um all the questions that we've answered this week in the last two weeks have
been from a community post we put up about two and a half weeks ago yep um we're gonna
put up a new thread yep yeah um overall there was so many questions about sleep training
we're gonna post that video this week on wednesday um we really thought it needed
the time and dedication for its own episode and also just for us to do extra research to
make sure we're bringing you guys really good information yeah so wednesday yes i'm having
said that this week we're answering questions about babies with flatheads and getting pregnant
so um in case this is your first time meeting us i'm kurt i'm a board certified pediatrician
i'm sarah i am a board certified ob gyn and we are the doctors bjorkman
right we are back happy labor day weekend uh we thought about camping but we kind of got rained
out this weekend so we're here with you for our sit down sunday and we are gonna get to some
great questions from you the first one comes from the wilds disney family um and they wrote i had
an explanon and it expired december of 2020 and i had it removed march of 2021 and it's been a year
and five months and i haven't been able to get pregnant we've been trying for six months having
sex every other day during my ovulation window i get my period every month regularly i also
track my ovulation and nothing any tips you guys could give me yeah sounds tough
really tough um i'm sorry that you are going through this the trying to conceive journey
can be a real roller coaster um just takes the fun out of it it really sucks after a while and it
takes something that's supposed to be fun and makes it work and stress and having been there
recently totally feel your pain and i'm really sorry for those of you who haven't seen it or
don't know we have a great video um about tips for trying to get pregnant fast and so definitely
check that out it goes into a little more detail about some of the things we're going to talk about
so honestly it sounds like you're doing a lot of things right and that's what's so frustrating
about fertility is that you can do everything right and not get the result you want so
what are those things like just for everyone else like the things that to think about getting
pregnant so things to think about at the beginning are kind of knowing your fertile window and to do
that tracking your cycles are a really great way to start because there are actually only about
five days each month that you can get pregnant and those are those five or six days right before you
ovulate because sperm can only live three to five days in the reproductive tract and that
egg that you ovulate actually only lives for 24 hours so you need the sperm there ready to
meet the egg when you ovulate so cycle tracking so you know when you ovulate is really helpful
and having sex every other day in that window is totally appropriate yep and so knowing if when
you ovulate or if you're ovulating using ovulation predictor kits or basal body temperature tracking
or cervical mucus are different ways um people do that um so those are kind of big picture things
for getting pregnant is knowing when you're ovulating and having sex at the right time
we go into some more details in that episode but it honestly sounds like you've been doing
all those things you have been having sex at the right time and so the other important thing
and she's having regular periods right the other thing that we kind of talk about is that
90 90 of couples generally are pregnant within one year or 12 months of unprotected intercourse
and so at that point if you are having you've been having regular periods and you don't have
any other gyn issues that we know of um or other medical history we say hey at that 12 month mark
it is a good idea to figure out if there's anything else that we're missing
um because truly honestly it sounds like you've been doing all the right things
um and if they were 35 or older that happens at six months we say if you are 35 or older and
you have had six months of unprotected intercourse and you are not pregnant we recommend again you
see your ob gyn or a fertility specialist so it sounds like you have have hit that mark just
to make sure everything is okay with you to get your partner checked out honestly to do a semen
analysis and make sure we're not missing anything there um that would be a great next step um
so having tried for a year or more the next step is to get help yes okay and i will say
as a partner who's been through this too and maybe had some mild male factor infertility as well like
getting both people checked out and like looking for the cause of that can hopefully find your
answer yeah so sending you all the luck fingers crossed that you get your big fat positive here
soon okay okay next question this comes from kawaii heather says flat-headed baby from sleeping
on one side is there anything safe we can use a friend recommended to donate donut-shaped pillow
for our two-month-old but i'm weary about putting anything in the crib with him okay great question
i'm also very happy that you're being careful about safe sleep and avoiding having pillows or
extra things in the crib with your baby and that can absolutely be potentially dangerous to them
so i will say your baby is two months old having slightly misshapen heads is incredibly common
um and usually is kind of a normal-ish part of being a new baby there are some
medical conditions that happen when the little suture lines between the bones and baby's head
fuse too soon that like can sometimes require a procedure so it's good if there's a significant
flattening of your baby's head to at least have your pediatrician or their medical provider take
a look at it to make sure that it's kind of normal flat head as opposed to a potential condition that
may need to be taken care of sometimes they have to wear those little helmets yeah so sometimes
that can be like just in the normal things but there are actually times where it requires
a surgical procedure to actually release the suture lines um in the head or wear the helmet
um the helmet is actually different what happens with the helmet so maybe you've seen someone
who had a family friend whose baby wore a little helmet and that is called positional plagiocephaly
um and so what that happens is means just what it says because the baby as it sounds like it's
happening with yours is often laying with its head on one side that side that they're laying
on gets flat and actually kind of flattens out that side of their head and almost can push their
ear on that side forward and push their forehead forward as well so that's where the helmet comes
in handy um in most cases of this as babies start to sit up more and move around more at that
six-month mark the head will start to round itself out because the suture lines still haven't fused
for most babies until closer to one year so have your pediatrician look at it but tips for things
we could do yes to try to prevent so i'm gonna set my coffee cup down here and i actually have
help from cecilia's uh stuffed animal bin to help us this is the bunny from good night moon
yep okay anyway so what often happened that was mine actually when i was a baby oh really yep
i slept with good night bunny every single night the dog chewed at least one or two of them and
so it's not like the ogee good night bunny but that was my good night's at least thirty years
old that guy's old anyway this three decade old stuffed animal is gonna help us a little bit yeah
what you may notice in your baby is that the neck muscles on one side of the neck
can often be tight too and this like goes along with the baby who's always laying on one side
always looking one way exactly like silicone and what this is called is torticollis and so
definitely i can see your baby's medical provider for this and they can help you but some things
that can help you so the first thing is just prevention um so if you're watching this and you
don't yet have this issue with your baby it's good to try to help them lay on both sides and like
this can mean like on monday wednesday friday they lay with their head to this side of the crib
and then on the other days of the week they live with the side of the his side of the crib because
oftentimes babies will like to look towards the window or look towards the door in the room
um this happens often with babies we see that we're born prematurely or in a neonatal icu for a
long time it's easy to find a thing i always have them look at one thing yeah and then if i'm always
looking at this way i'm always on the right side of my head and i get a flat spot there same thing
is true with those bald spots but it's a little bit more severe when that happens so when cease
was little we'd be like oh is she always looking right or is she always looking left and we'd try
when she was on the floor we'd if she liked to look at this mirror then we'd switch her so then
she was looking at the mirror from the other side just to be intentional about trying to get her to
be looking both ways and laying her head both ways exactly and invariably she had a bald spot on the
back of her head anyway and so part of just being a baby i think she really didn't like her car seat
with us but neither here or there the other thing if you've got a baby who is in this like two to
four to six month range and they like do have a little bit of flattening in one of their heads
you've seen their medical provider and they say hey nope all the suture lines are nice and open
this isn't premature closure of any of those sometimes what happens is that muscle on the side
of the neck gets tight the sternocleidomastoid and you can actually do some gentle like stretching
with that and i want to be like be very gentle with this again we're not here providing medical
advice to you but something that we did with our child is just when you're changing them at time of
diapers a couple things you can do is you can just gently just turn their head away from that side
that's tight and try to get them to look towards that other shoulder you can do this ideally while
they're laying flat very very gently just turning them in the other direction and coming back the
other way too just as they're working to stretch this muscle out here practicing looking looking
that other way the other thing then you can do too is just gently turning their ear to that
shoulder this way again really gentle stretching and this just helps keep those neck muscles loose
so they don't get so used to always turning this way and that muscle gets tight too and so some
gentle things that you can do even as prevention for preventing some of that maybe your little
baby stretches plagiocephaly or flat-headed baby positional plagiocephaly that's six times that um
so anyway hopefully that helps you but again have your pediatrician take a look at it make sure that
there isn't something else called craniosynostosis which is just the premature fusion fusion of those
future lines and then just stretch to little baby stretches and be intentional about making
sure they're looking both ways when they're on the floor when they're on your lap um
and good news is for most cases it gets better on its own a lot of it when they get six months old
yup um in the more extreme cases they get those cool little helmets little helmets that are work
that i'm sure you would like to avoid if you can fun but they're cute so yeah so those are some
great questions we got this week look for a new thread this week for some new questions for next
week's sit down sunday with the doctors bjorkman and without further ado the episode you've been
waiting for about sleep training sleep learning getting that sweet baby to sleep is coming at
you on wednesday so get excited okay make sure you're subscribed guys we'll see you later bye
we're doctors but not your doctors anything we've said in this video
is for education or entertainment purposes only it is not medical
advice any specific medical questions you have should be directed to your provider