When Evelyn was about 3 months old she started developing a very noticeable flat spot on the back left side of her head, behind her ear. She just preferred to sleep on that little spot. Our pediatrician told us that when she started rolling, her head would round out and encouraged us each visit with lines like, "it looks SOOOO much better!" It did look better, but it still wasn't round. And when by her 15 month check up it hadn't improved much more, we asked another doctor for her opinion. She told us it wouldn't likely change and this would probably be her head shape. She also said it probably wouldn't be noticeable due to her hair covering it and the fact that it was very minimal to begin with. She did give me the name to a cranial specialist in DC who we could consult with if we chose to go that route. Josh wanted to, but I didn't. The thought of putting my sweet, little girl in a hideous, plastic helmet was almost more than I could handle. I agreed to talk to the specialist and see what they thought.
See in the bottom left pic how her head has that uneven flat spot on the left while the right side bulges out a tad?
At her appointment they put a nylon sock over her head to get some pictures. Their fancy shmancy computers analyzed her head and they told us she would be a candidate for a "doc band". They actually put her in the moderate/severe category of plagiocephaly due to the fact that her left ear had shifted forward slightly.
CRAZY that our pediatrician thought it was no big deal! If we did nothing, it's not like she would have any long term medical problems from having a funny shaped head, so the treatment would be completely cosmetic. I was still against it and Josh went back and forth. Finally, after a few tears, I agreed that doing something would be better than doing nothing and we got her in for a follow up appointment to take more sophisticated measurements. Then a week and a half later, we went up for her fitting. Here she is with her new, shiny, WHITE helmet!
And JUST as I was thinking about how I could prevent people from staring and thinking my daughter was "special", I snapped this pic...
Not very convincing!
It's much harder to sleep in the car with the helmet :)
Luckily, these bad boys can be painted and decorated. A few coats of pink paint later, VOILA!
All things considered, I'm really glad we are doing this now. It's expensive, I'll miss putting bows in her hair, and not being able to snuggle her without being smacked in the face with cold, hard plastic, but at least we did everything we could to help her sweet little head! Hopefully we'll have some awesome "after" pictures to post in 3-4 months!
