Progress and more about the helmet

Well I didn't get to explain too much on my last post regarding the helmet, the plagiocephaly, and the amazing progress we've seen so far. Plagiocephaly is basically flattening of the head. It happens for many reasons, some of which are very scary (i.e. craniosynostosis) but fortunately for us, that wasn't the case. We saw a lot of improvement by repositioning him and keeping him off the back of his head but not enough (we were borderline) not to have a helmet recommended. Basically, we could have kept him out of a helmet, but he could have significant difficulties later with TMJ disorder and more asymmetry than is considered normal. The asymmetry can affect eye glass positioning and overall facial feature symmetry just to name a couple of things.

Before Nicolas was placed in the helmet, the orthotist took lots of baseline measurements, many of which really didn't mean a whole lot to me since I didn't understand what they meant. The number that is usually looked at is the cranial vault symmetry, which in Nicolas' case, wasn't really an issue. He was a 5 (which is usually the goal for kid's whose plagiocephaly is a lot worse.) We are currently at a 2 which is excellent. The biggest area of concern is the cephalic index. He started at a 98 and needs to be in the low 80s. He's currently at an 89. We will see the largest amount of change the quicker his head grows. At this point, we aren't expecting as much growth as quickly as were seeing it but we're hopeful to be in the low 80s soon. It could be anywhere from 4 to 8 more weeks but of course Nicolas' growth will be the ultimate determining factor and nobody can truly gauge how quickly that will happen.

In the meantime, he really is a trooper. He wears it 23 hours a day and gets an hour off for bathing and cleaning the helmet. It's pretty hilarious to see him without the helmet because he's become accustomed to banging his head without consequence so now we get lots of sad faces and whimpers when he bangs his head sans helmet. It was really stinky initially because he was sweating a lot. Now, we have little to no sweat so he's not so stinky any more. :)

We get lots of stares when we're out in public but fortunately for me, I'm a very confident person so I just smile. To those who keep staring rudely, my honest face usually gets the best of me and I've perfected the kiss-my-butt face. One of the veterans in the prosthetic support meeting told me that he sees a future in football for my little guy. :)