According to a Calgary study, more than 50% of babies have flattened spots on the back of their heads by the time they are two months. This is attributed to sleeping on the back of the head, a step taken to reduce sudden infant death syndrome.

"What we found out was that when we studied infants that were seven to 12 weeks of age coming into two-month immunization clinics in Calgary, almost half of them had some sort of flat spot on their head," Aliyah Mawji, lead author of the study at Mount Royal University in Calgary of the school of nursing.

"That was pretty surprising. I didn't anticipate that it would be that high," she added.

Though this phenomenon called plagiocephaly is not a medical problem, it can result in permanent cosmetic alterations affecting a child’s life.
"If they've got a flat spot on one side, what that likely means is that they've got the forehead protrusion on the same side and they also have a bit of ear shifting forward on the same side," said Mawji in an online report by Yahoo News.

However, the distortions from plagiocephaly may be prevented easily.

"I would assume that if you've got a child that looks a little bit different than some of the other kids in their class, they might be at risk for bullying," she said. "Because you've got the chin that points in the other direction, you've got some shifting of the nose and the ears and the eyes and the forehead.”

"They're going to look a little bit different. So we do need to be careful about that," The Canadian Press reports.

The study was published in Pediatrics in order to create awareness about the condition, which parents can prevent at early stages.
The major step for reducing flat spots on the head includes laying the baby on its back to avoid sudden death syndrome and then alternating days when the head is positioned to the right and left during sleep.

As a child with facial distortions grows older, treating fat spots require helmets and can be expensive. It is also a drain on the health care system with the number of cases as high as 78.3%, reports Headlines & Global News.