A Stranger Saw Something Weird In Mom’s Photo, And Now Her Daughter’s Life Will Never Be The Same
It’s common for parents to post pictures of their children on social media. It’s also, unfortunately, quite common for well-meaning, or perhaps not so well-meaning people, sometimes complete strangers, to write comments that fall under the category of mom shaming.
Most parents don’t post pictures of their children expecting to receive an out of the blue comment from a stranger that would have a huge impact of their child’s life, but sometimes, that actually happens.
If you’re a fan of the show “The Bachelorette,” you may recognize Ashley and J.P. Rosenbaum. The couple met on the show when Ashley was that season’s bachelorette. She ended up accepting J.P.’s proposal, and the couple got married on the show.
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Ashley and J.P. are used to having their relationship in the public eye since it’s always been that way for them. Ashley has more than 300,000 followers on Instagram, so every time she posts a picture of her kids, she knows she might get mom shamed.
Ashley is pretty good about ignoring the negative comments, but when her daughter, Essex, was born, she never expected a complete stranger to have such a big impact on her daughter’s life.
Shortly after Essex was born, Ashley posted lots of pictures of her daughter, as new parents often do. There was one comment on one of the photos that stood out to Ashley. At first, she ignored it, but she couldn’t completely forget about it and eventually looked into it.
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Ashley told PEOPLE, “Our daughter, when she was born, I was posting pictures of her and somebody wrote me a message saying, ‘Hey, get her checked out’ because she was always twisted, she had torticollis. Someone said, ‘Get it checked out because my son had the same thing.’”
After getting Essex checked out, she was shocked to realize that the stranger who commented on her post was right. Her daughter did in fact have torticollis.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Torticollis, also known as wryneck, is a twisting of the neck that causes the head to rotate and tilt at an odd angle.” While the exact cause of torticollis is unknown, one potential cause in babies is thought to be “a neck muscle injury at birth.”
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Torticollis is fairly easy to treat if caught early, and thanks to the stranger’s comment, Essex’s case was caught early. Ashely explained, “We got the baby helmet and everything!”
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Ashley and J.P. share two children together. Essex has an older brother named Fordham. Unfortunately, their marriage didn’t work out long term, and Ashley and J.P. are currently divorced and splitting child custody 50/50.
