The Road to a Baby's Round Head - Part 2 - About Week 1

It’s Working!

Lucas has now been in his DOC band helmet for four weeks and we can see a very big difference, particularly above his ears where he was very wide. He also had a deep ridge in the back of his head and that is absolutely gone. The back still looks flat, but we can see that it is starting to fill in at the bottom. The technicians were very happy with the results after only three weeks.

Looking Back - The First Week

Looking back over the last few weeks makes me appreciate how much he has gotten used to wearing his helmet, particularly at night. The first week was miserable. The folks at Cranial Technologies warned us that he would get hot, but we didn’t expect what we went through. I’m not going to downplay it - it was bad! Every kid is different, and our son tends to be a ‘hot’ baby. The first night we took the helmet off after about 3 hours because he was so upset. He woke up completely soaked down his back, and there was really no consoling him. That night I thought we’d never get through it. I think we slept a total of 4 hours.

Sleeping with the DOC band helmet

During the first few days we followed the guidelines (take off every couple of hours to check for sores) and every time we took it off, he was soaked. No sores the first week. I called Cranial Technologies and they told me that it just takes some time for their body temperature to adjust. The second night we broke our rules and let him sleep in bed with us. That made it easier for me to feel for sweat, and when I started to feel it drip out of the helmet, I would take it off for an hour or two (yep, in the middle of the night). I’d set my iPhone timer so that I could wake up and put it back on. I am not going to say it was easy, but by the 4th night he was not leaking sweat out of it anymore. By the fifth day he was definitely sweating a lot less. We also really chilled down the room to 70 degrees and didn’t put him in pajama pants. He is still only sleeping in an onesie. It’s made a big difference. I’ll try throwing a blankie on him but he only kicks it off. Now that he’s adjusted, we are sleeping with the room at 73 degrees and with the ceiling fan.

I was pleasantly shocked by the fact that the helmet had absolutely no impact on him during the day. He completely ignores it. Once in a while when he’s tired he’ll tug on the part by his ear, but only because that’s how he always tells us he’s tired. Funny side benefit - now that Lucas is crawling and scooting, the helmet has saved us from many, many bruises! The helmet does droop down a lot when he's drinking his bottle, so we just make sure to adjust it so that it doesn't get in his way. One other thing - parents have to be careful! We have been scraped and banged by our son's head a few times, and it hurts!

When we went back for our first adjustment (the first time its in a week) they had to do some pretty major cutting in the front of the helmet because it was coming down too low over his eyebrows, and it was hitting his left ear every time he got on his belly to try to crawl. I kept thinking that the helmet wasn’t’ the right size, but Cranial Technologies reminded me that they have to leave room for three months worth of head growth. If you think about how much they grow every month, the size of the helmet made more sense.

A few days after this first adjustment we ended up back at Cranial Technologies. Lucas was getting fairly large red spots at his temples that weren’t disappearing, so we went back and they adjusted it again. That fixed the problem, and we haven’t had any issues with sores since then.

I waited to decorate his helmet until we went for his 2nd week’s appointment, just to make sure that they weren’t going to drastically change anything else on the outside of the helmet. After that second appointment, we went right to Pearl Art Center and bought our goodies. More on decorating the DOC band helmet in my next entry!

Hope this gives everyone some sense of what the expect after they get the DOC band helmet. Best of luck to those considering it or just starting out!