Eight-month-old Jaydon Broomhead would always turn his head to the right when he was tucked up in bed.

Parents Laura Connolly and Mark Broomhead didn't think much of it until they noticed their son's ears were out of alignment.

Now they are warning others not to allow their babies to always sleep on one side to avoid them suffering from positional plagiocephaly – a flattening of part of babies' tiny skulls.

Miss Connolly of Farlington Road, North End, Portsmouth, said: 'Until we saw it happen in Jaydon we'd never heard of it.

'We have always given him a lot of tummy time so he's not always lying on his head but no-one warned us that if he kept lying on one side this could happen.

'If we'd known we would have made more of an effort to stop him turning his head to the right all the time.'

There is now a nearly an inch difference in the alignment of his ears and the couple have looked into getting a special helmet for him to wear, which would work like teeth braces and move the bones back into shape gradually.

The problem occurs because the skull is made up of different bones, which fuse together as babies grow.

Miss Connolly, 38, said: 'We've been told the bones will gradually move back into shape but there's no guarantee and there are cases of adults whose head have always stayed the wrong shape.

'We don't want to have to put a helmet on him – we're going to wait and see if his head starts to go back to normal.

'Hopefully it will, especially now he's started moving his head to the other side when he sleeps.

'I just want to warn other parents to make sure their babies don't always turn their head to one side.'