Helmet baby

When Jackson was a baby he had plagiocephaly, which is the medical term for flat head. It wasn’t obvious to the naked eye at first, but about 6 weeks in it started to develop, and about four months into his sweet little life you couldn’t miss it, even though it was a fairly mild case. You can read all the scientific hows and whys here, in his case it seems that it initially developed due to his fetal position in the womb combined with a soft skull.

His pediatrician said that it was purely cosmetic and advised against any action, but the fact was we could see it worsen by the week. Since he was 6 weeks old he’d go down for 12 hours straight every night, always on his back as recommended, and his head would naturally role into the flat spot so the condition didn’t stand a chance of improving, just of worsening. We insisted on taking him to see a specialist and we were happy to find one of the top experts in her field, Dr Rozzelle, was right here at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. She took one look at him and recommended he be fitted with a helmet and we then worked with Wright & Filippis to have him measured and fitted. It wasn’t a tough decision for us as parents to have him fitted with the helmet, it was the recommendation of a top specialist and we’d already felt that treatment was needed. Yes it sucked to make a 6 month old wear a helmet for 23 hours a day (we only removed it an hour a day to wash him and the helmet), but it was also not an option.

He took to it like a champ, never having any issues. The only reaction I really remember was that he would bang on it a lot at first, we thought he was just checking it out but we learned that they like the sound the helmet makes. We’d take him every few weeks to get him checked out and have the helmet adjusted, obviously as his heads shape improved the helmet needed to be altered accordingly.

And that was that. I think the whole helmet stage lasted less than four months – he started late August and passing the test to no longer have to wear it came as an early Christmas present. We got to him soon enough that his skull was still malleable enabling a rapid realignment. You can see from the photo the improvement made by the procedure, which is all natural by the way – no surgery or any kind of medication involved. It’s obvious how flat his skull was in the back, but more subtly the front right side of his skull was protruding, and even his right ear was misaligned. I can’t believe something like this would’ve just had a cosmetic outcome, surely having your head constantly point in a certain direction would end up creating some devastating posture issues – the bodies ying and yang would be off kilt and there’s all kinds of spinal or muscular dangers involved. And psychologically too, for better or worse our society judges people by their looks.

It was just a blip on the radar of his long life and I’m glad as parents we made the necessary decision on behalf of our child. Sometimes we even miss that crazy little baby with the helmet! And of course these days he has the roundest head on the block.