Do-Rag Baby

Drew's getting a helmet. Not because he's accident prone, but because he has plagiocephaly (a flat spot on his head) and torticollis (tightening of the neck muscles on one side). He's been in physical therapy for almost three months now, going every other week. Our fantastic physical therapist Katie does all sorts of different stretches with him and teaches me what to do at home.

The pediatric physical therapy office also houses speech and occupational therapy. As not wonderful as going through all of this is, I look around at all of the other precious children in the waiting room at the clinic and feel extremely lucky. Things could be much worse. A helmet seems pretty minor. Ah, perspective.

The possibility of Drew needing a helmet has always been there, but at our last PT appointment Katie told to make an appointment with the orthotist (person who does all of the helmets, leg braces, etc, etc) for a consult. So we did.

The process of taking the measurements for the helmet was actually pretty cool. Drew had to put on this fantastic do-rag kind of thing, be in just his diaper and lay still in the scanner for a second and a half. This is a picture of what the scanner was like. The do-rag was my favorite part.

About ten minutes after the scan, the orthotist came back with all of the print outs with measurements and images of Drew's head. It was pretty neat. You could definitely tell he has a flat spot! We also learned that he has some pretty significant "ear shift" (yes, that's the technical term), meaning his ears are not in symmetrical spots. There's a shift of 11.2 mm. The orthotist said that it's not very likely that we'll get improvement of more that 50-60%. Bummer.

We go back on Tuesday to pick up the helmet and learn all about it. I even have to watch a video. So fun. I'll be sure to post some pics of the boy in his brand-spankin' new blue helmet and keep you updated on our adventures in helmet land!

Chillin' in his do-rag in his Exersaucer at home

The picture of the scanner is from here.