Plagiocephaly Helmets

The boys got their helmets on on Tuesday. It was a very long appointment.

The doctor started out by measuring their heads again. This time both boy's heads had a circumference of 435mm. For Kevin this was good. It represented 4mm of growth, which is on the high side, but perfectly good. For Alex though, it was 10mm of growth, and the inside of the helmet was made to be 435mm, which means that the helmet is way small.

The helmets look like a wrestler's helmet, open on the top, circles around the head, obviously not covering the face, and cut outs for the ears. ( ) I'll add pictures of the boys to here very soon. Kevin has a dark blue helmet, and Alex's is light blue. The outside is a hard plastic shell, and the inside is hard Styrofoam.

The doctor spent quite a bit of time on Alex's helmet. When the helmet's come in they are purposely made to cover more of the face, ears, and neck than what they should. The doctor then puts the helmet on and draws some lines on the helmet for where he wants cut out for the face. He then used a grinder to trim down the size of the helmet. Because of how much Alex's head had grown he had to do quite a bit of grinding. Then he had to do some extra grinding on the inside of the helmet, due to the growth. We have to follow up with several appointments where the doctor will grind out the inside of the helmet to allow for growth of the skull. Well because Alex's head grew so much he had to grind out the inside already at delivery. We have a follow up on Monday, and then the doctor is going to rescan Alex's head and possibly make Alex a new helmet.

Kevin's head didn't grow quite as much so it didn't take nearly as long to grind out his helmet. But the one nice thing about the length of time sitting around and waiting was that the boys needed to eat shortly after the appointment started so we got a chance to feed them and let them take a nap.

We were surprised to find out that there is a ramp up period to wearing the helmets. We kinda thought it was just a go and put it on thing. But as it turns out there is a schedule to follow:

Day 1: 1 hour on 1 hour off
Day 2: 2 hour on 1 hour off
Day 3: 4 hour on 1 hour off
Day 4: 6 hour on 1 hour off
Day 5: 6-8 hour on 1 hour off
( not sure exactly why there is such a big range here )
Day 6: 8 hours during the day and then overnight
( this is the first time they have to sleep with the helmets on )
Day 7 on: 23 hours a day

Its kinda nice cause they get to gradually get used to the helmets. Of course Jamie has to work Wed, Thur, Fri this week. We don't want to stick that on my parents so I'm gonna work from home the rest of the week so that I can handle the schedule. At the doctor's office the boys didn't really mind having the helmets on too much, but they really were not big fans of the putting them on and taking them off process.

The bigger, better surprise was the length of time that they are likely going to have to wear the helmets. According to all the research I was doing; typically kids get helmets on around 6-7 months old and wear them for 10-14 months. And if its caught early and the helmets go on around 4-6 months ( the boys are right in that range now ) then the average time that they have to wear the helmets is 4-5 months. Well based on how the boys have grown up until now the doctor estimates that the boys might be able to get the helmets off in 2.5 months. That would mean end of October/beginning of November. Our hope was that they would get them off by Christmas time, but really we were thinking more like early January, so this is way better then we thought. Hopefully the next 2.5 months are just as good.